Features - Storage Innovations:

RETAIL SERVICES LEADER RUNS BUSINESS ON UTILITY STORAGE

3PAR, a leading provider of Utility Storage, announced that UniquE Solutions, a leading supplier of turnkey IT solutions for retail service agencies, has purchased and been running its business on the 3PAR InServ Storage Server for several months now. UniquE Solutions, which supports over 2,500 field service representatives that are responsible for the in-store promotion and inventory management of large retailers like Lowe's and Toys R Us, chose the 3PAR solution to simplify its growing storage environment and ensure future scalability needs.

UniquE Solutions provides a broad range of services to retail service agencies and their field representatives, including remote signature and image capture, bar code scanning, call reporting, internal e-mail, and expense reporting. UniquE's many services and a growing customer base caused the company to outgrow an increasingly complex storage environment. UniquE chose 3PAR Utility Storage to address this growth and to minimize management complexity.

"Before 3PAR, my storage administrator spent 50 to 70% of his time managing our storage -- now ongoing administration only takes 5% or less of his time," stated Ben Mullis, vice-president of IT at UniquE Solutions.

"We initially considered going with a midrange array from a brand leader, but chose 3PAR for better scalability, ease-of-use, speed, and TCO," added Tim Rich Jr., UniquE Solutions network administrator. "With 3PAR, we saved money immediately and were able to defer a $60,000 redundant switch purchase."