Petrochemical Provider Consolidates Storage Infrastructure

Aspen Technology and MTI

Aspen Technology, Inc. is a well known software and professional services organization that serves the petrochemical industry. AspenTech's software helps process companies improve efficiency and profitability by enabling them to model, manage and control their operations. More than 1,500 companies use AspenTech software, including Bayer, BASF, BP, Chevron Corporation, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Fluor, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Shell, and Total.

The IT Challenge

As Aspen Technology has grown over the years, the company has made a number of business acquisitions, resulting in the accumulation of many points of data throughout the organization. Much of AspenTech's critical data was spread across 25 application and development servers, as well as an aging EMC Symmetrix. The widely distributed nature of AspenTech's storage infrastructure created a large administrative burden for the IT staff, as well as significant cost to the organization.

AspenTech turned to MTI to design and implement a complete storage solution that would consolidate their storage and deliver increased performance and reliability while providing a lower cost of ownership.

The Solution

With their existing infrastructure in need of a technology refresh, AspenTech relied on MTI's Professional Services Group to assess, design and implement a complete storage solution and to provide onsite services in support of the new system rollout.

MTI upgraded AspenTech's storage infrastructure, providing them with a flexible, scalable storage solution that allows them to meet their growing storage requirements, while cutting maintenance costs and maximizing ROI. In the process of upgrading and consolidating AspenTech's storage systems, MTI has also provided them with a single point of contact for the on-going service and support of their new storage infrastructure.

AspenTech chose MTI because of their outstanding professional services team, their global presence, as well as their strategic relationship with EMC. MTI's expertise encompasses complete storage infrastructure, including storage network design (SAN and NAS), implementation and management of data backup, data recovery, archiving, automated tape libraries and full service 24x7 support.

The Implementation

MTI's Professional Services Group replaced AspenTech's aging EMC Symmetrix system with a new CLARiiON CX700 storage array. MTI also performed a data migration from the existing server farm and Symmetrix array, consolidating AspenTech's critical data to the new CX700 SAN. The CX700 provides AspenTech with a flexible, highly reliable storage solution that allows them to run their business systems, as well as perform critical software development activities.

By consolidating their storage, AspenTech now enjoys increased backup and disaster recovery capabilities. In addition, MTI's expert professional services consultants worked closely with AspenTech's IT staff to provide comprehensive knowledge transfer on the operation and support of the solution. "Finding a vendor that you really trust isn't easy, and in MTI we have received prompt, reliable service, outstanding customer support and their professional services consultants have been extremely flexible in supporting our new infrastructure," stated Steve Chiodi, IS manager for Aspen Technology, Inc. "Plus, MTI was able to leverage their relationship with EMC to help us secure an extremely favorable deal on the hardware components of our system refresh."


The MTI installation included:

• EMC CLARiiON CX700
• Fibre Channel drives
• McData Fiber Channel switches
• Install and configure Navisphere Manager
• Install Navisphere agents and PowerPath
• Allocate RAID groups, LUNs, and storage groups

The Results

As a result of MTI's implementation, AspenTech has consolidated their disk storage and achieved greater system performance, dependability and redundancy. MTI provides AspenTech with a single point of contact for service, support and hardware.

"MTI was able to reduce our storage systems from 25 servers down to a single SAN solution, which has dramatically improved our infrastructure performance, reliability, as well as our disaster recovery capabilities," added Chiodi. "By eliminating all of those servers, we've freed up a lot of valuable time that was being spent administering our systems, which has resulted in significant cost savings. Plus, by consolidating all of our third-party maintenance contracts into a single contract with MTI, managing our infrastructure is now considerably easier."

Technologies Implemented:

EMC CLARiiON CX700
Fibre Channel drives
McData Fiber Channel switches
Configure storage arrays
Install and configure Navisphere Manager
Allocate RAID groups, LUNs, and storage groups

Services Offered:

Design and implement a complete storage solution
Provide storage consolidation and data migration
Extensive knowledge transfer
Service and maintenance support
24X7 Customer Support

Benefits Realized by Customer:

Server consolidation
Highly scalable storage infrastructure to meet future demands
Improved backup and disaster recovery capabilities
Seamless transition with no down time
Single point of contact for service, support and hardware
Consolidate all third-party maintenance contracts into a single contract
Reduced cost of operations
Maximize ROI

www.aspentechnology.com

www.mti.com