Customer Stories

Dell took both an active interest and practical approach in working with us to reach a strong functional outcome in line with our business needs. Working together with Dell's quality solutions and professional services teams helped us implement a solution for the expansion of Singapore, Auckland and our new flagship premises in Sydney's CBD, which has proven highly successful and is now being further deployed throughout all our branches regionally" Ben Creamer, IT Manager.

EXCOM Education is Australia's leading technical training partner focusing on quality IT technical training solutions for IT professionals , businesses and IT career aspirants. Delivering technical training for more than 12 years , EXCOM has eight education centres across the region in Australia , Singapore and New Zealand . Over the past several years EXCOM has also consistently won a broad range of country, regional and global vendor awards recognising its world class quality technical training and innovative solutions.

The training partner has most recently moved from its previous site into brand new state-ofthe- art corporate offices within the Sydney CBD, and in parallel with this needed to resource and house a high end SAN & Blade server infrastructure for use in the delivery of leading edge VMware training to classes across its entire regional network.

Name: EXCOM Education
Country: Australia, Singapore, New Zealand
Industry: Education, ICT
Founded: 1996
Employees: 200+
Website: www.excom.com.au

Challenges

Required powerful hardware solutions to deliver new high-end vendor technology training from strategic partners such as Microsoft & VMware Accommodate growth in international markets, plus relocation and expansion of Sydney premises to modern, cutting-edge facilities Need for implementation of consistent SOE hardware infrastructure across the region Commitment to remain the leader in providing quality IT training facilities Solution Following an exhaustive process to review available technology against needs, EXCOM invested in the latest Dell server grade PCs for high-level class delivery. Virtual DataCentre resource consisting of Blade servers, SAN hardware, and accompanying UPS & power infrastructure implemented in Sydney to facilitate the delivery of VMware training solutions to any branch within the EXCOM regional network. M1000e blade enclosure hosting 16 of the latest M600 blade servers to provide core processing - each fitted with 8 Gigabytes of RAM and 8 CPUs allowing 128 processors and 128 Gigabytes of RAM to be allocated as required. DELL AX4-5 SAN with Terabytes of storage connected using Fibre Channel technology to allow fastest possible information transmission. Dell Blade solution provided best value for money on several levels, including optimal physical footprint requiring only 10RU of rack space to host the 16 servers - very cost effective as Sydney CBD space remains at a premium. M1000e enclosure and M600 blade servers also provided significant power savings compared with alternatives, further reducing both implementation & ongoing costs.

Benefits

Consistent hardware SOE implementation across region, with local delivery & support Reduced 'time to market' when opening new centres in different countries Cost effective, low footprint, high reliability = happy clients & happy staff Energy efficient and environmentally conscious Provides for rapid growth and development without jeopardizing quality of service SAN/Blade solution will provide a Return on Investment of less than 12 months based on cost-savings v. previous use of external US based data centre resources.