How the Pistons got ahead of the game with Infinidat to define a new IT standard for sports enterprises.
The Detroit Pistons had a game plan to improve its data infrastructure in support of the team’s front office, administrative and basketball operations at the Henry Ford Detroit Pistons Performance Center.
To execute that plan the Pistons chose Infinidat as their #1 pick for enterprise storage.
The results so far, such as significant cost savings and a whole new level of efficiency, come from a winning combination of ease of use, high performance, expandability and green IT.
Infinidat and their channel partner Mainline Information Systems worked together to deliver a
powerful solution that modernized the Pistons’ storage infrastructure and implemented a set-it-and-forget-it approaches with autonomous automation.
This defines a new IT standard for sports enterprises.
“We didn’t just want an incremental improvement to our storage capabilities; we wanted a leap forward in how we approach storage, as part of our broader vision for simpler, faster, more cost-effective, more sustainable, more flexible technologies,” said Paul Rapier, Vice President of Information Technology, Detroit Pistons.
“Infinidat’s enterprise storage solution has proven to be a perfect fit for our data infrastructure. Infinidat’s InfiniBox platform for primary storage manages itself. We don’t have to touch storage anymore.
“Meanwhile, the cost savings and time savings from our pivot to Infinidat keep rolling in. Going forward, we can spend more of our time on other projects.”
Having too many storage arrays created complexity for the Pistons. The money, resources and personnel required to manage multiple arrays from three different vendors led to inefficiencies, waste and rising costs.
“Our storage space was limited and as we explored solutions, we looked at additional space and the ease to grow as some of our biggest considerations in searching for and selecting a new storage solution,” said Rapier.
“Matching our storage capacity and capabilities with evolving business requirements led us on a journey to discover an alternative system,” said Rapier.
The Pistons tipped for InfiniBox, a platform providing 100% availability, high performance, ease of use, autonomous automation, flexible consumption models and green IT advantages.
“Mainline Information Systems recommended Infinidat, we were amazed at the innovation of InfiniBox and how much it provides for primary storage in every way. We had to take a time-out and reassess our approach to storage.”
InfiniBox is also accompanied by Infinidat’s white glove service, which is the #1 service and support in the enterprise storage industry.
Installation of the InfiniBox in a single rack in their main data facility at the Pistons Performance Center was 3x faster than the implementation of the Pistons’ previous storage arrays by the incumbent vendors.
InfiniBox allows the Pistons to consolidate the applications and workloads from three different storage vendors onto their InfiniBox platform, which now provides the storage capacity, performance and advanced capabilities for VMware environments, SQL environments and various file applications and workloads, including data stores, video and file archives.
The new solution eliminated the complexity of having multiple storage boxes with different user interfaces and different operating systems, as well as multiple service plans.
“InfiniBox is easy to use and we love how it’s easy to expand when we need more storage capacity,” Rapier said.
Since moving to InfiniBox, the Pistons have cut ongoing storage management time by 75% and evolved IT implementation into a state of-the-art, automated storage infrastructure.
“Infinidat took a heavy weight off our shoulders for us in the tech department. We don’t have the performance issues looming over our head like we did with the previous storage system. Now, there are no issues doing the data ingest. As a senior IT leader, I sleep better at night, thanks to Infinidat,” said Rapier.
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