Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Storage
prnewswire | July 14, 2023
Pure Storage®, the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technology and services, today announced that University Hospital Centre of Saint-Etienne, one of the leading university hospitals in southeast France, is leveraging its portfolio - including FlashArray™, Pure1®, and its Evergreen® architecture - to secure and accelerate access to critical data in order to improve overall patient care and business continuity.
Customer Challenge:
The University Hospital Centre (CHU) of Saint-Etienne is a public institution that specializes in healthcare, research, and teaching, providing a variety of patient care to people in the region, ranging from pediatrics and maternity care to heart surgery and radiation treatment.
As CHU Saint-Etienne increased its data footprint, its legacy storage technologies - a mix of aging disk storage - struggled to meet growing capacity needs, taking up a great deal of space and threatening availability due to regular breakdowns.
Faced with growing demands and limited space, the hospital needed to modernize its IT infrastructure, which serves as the foundation for all of its patient systems. As a result, CHU Saint-Etienne worked with partner Axians to shift its legacy infrastructure to Pure Storage, replacing approximately 70 units of legacy hardware with just six units contained in two Pure Storage FlashArray systems, meeting the organization's space constraint requirements.
Customer Impact:
Pure Storage provides CHU Saint-Etienne the availability, security, and performance it needs to both scale and improve patient care, while enabling easy maintenance for its small IT team. Benefits include:
Modernized, Efficient Storage Infrastructure: With Pure Storage FlashArray, CHU Saint-Etienne has significantly reduced its power consumption while increasing storage capacity by 50% compared to its legacy storage environment. The increased capacity enables the hospital's IT team more flexibility to shift workloads and increase demand as needed, providing a future-proof foundation to scale with patients.
Reduced Time Spent on Storage Management: Pure Storage's Pure1 AI-driven management platform enables CHU Saint-Etienne to reduce administrative time with an easy-to-use interface that simplifies storage management and allows new IT team members to get up to speed quickly. Additionally, the Pure Evergreen architecture further simplifies management with seamless, non-disruptive upgrades to existing controllers, eliminating downtime for the hospital.
Enhanced Data Protection and Greater Availability: Using Pure Storage SafeMode Snapshots in FlashArray, CHU Saint-Etienne can now secure its storage environment with fast recovery of data that has been inadvertently deleted, making it easier to comply with data retention requirements. Snapshots, along with ActiveCluster™ active-active replication across the FlashArray systems, help to minimize the impact of cyberattacks. Pure Storage thus reinforces CHU Saint-Etienne's business continuity plan by helping to deliver greater availability.
Improved Application Performance: The new Pure Storage infrastructure dramatically improves application performance for CHU Saint-Etienne, reducing latency from around 17 milliseconds to under a millisecond in most use cases. Staff and clinicians can access data faster and provide a better quality of care to patients and other users of the hospital.
Executive Insight:
"Moving our legacy storage environment to Pure Storage was one of the best decisions we could have made as an IT team. Not only does Pure Storage deliver unrivaled performance and management capabilities that meet our data storage needs, but it enables us to truly secure and scale sensitive and business-critical data to meet growing patient demands, ultimately helping us deliver better care across the region." – Samuel Pelissier, IT Infrastructure and Operation Manager, CHU Saint-Etienne
"We're supporting CHU Saint-Etienne to power the healthcare of tomorrow. Data is central to delivering better patient outcomes and faster diagnosis and our solutions enable the University Hospital in this regard. Not only are we meeting CHU's needs and positively impacting patients' lives, we're also supporting sustainability for the public sector organisation in greatly reducing its data centre footprint." - Hugues Hueze, Country Manager France, Pure Storage.
About Pure Storage
Pure Storage uncomplicates data storage, forever. Pure delivers a cloud experience that empowers every organization to get the most from their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. Pure's commitment to providing true storage as-a-service gives customers the agility to meet changing data needs at speed and scale, whether they are deploying traditional workloads, modern applications, containers, or more. Pure believes it can make a significant impact in reducing data center emissions worldwide through its environmental sustainability efforts, including designing products and solutions that enable customers to reduce their carbon and energy footprint. And with a certified customer satisfaction score in the top one percent of B2B companies, Pure's ever-expanding list of customers are among the happiest in the world.
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Application Infrastructure, Data Storage
businesswire | August 01, 2023
Elisa Oyj, a leading telecommunications company, has achieved a significant milestone in the field of edge computing with the successful deployment of its first fully automated edge data center site, which is the second edge site to go into commercial production this year. This groundbreaking project combines Wind River Studio Cloud Platform as the production-grade distributed Kubernetes solution for managing cloud infrastructure, User Plane Function (UPF) application from Elisa’s current 5G core vendor, and the advanced capabilities of Wind River Studio Conductor, an industry leading platform that delivers a single pane of glass to manage and automate applications deployment in large-scale distributed environments.
The deployment of this state-of-the-art edge data center site represents a significant achievement to strengthen Elisa’s position as the leading digital service provider in automating operations. It showcases the company's commitment to embracing next-generation technologies to unlock the potential of edge computing for a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing.
”We are delighted to continue our efficient collaboration with Wind River and take the first Fully Automated Edge Data Center into commercial service. Constant automation development is our key to future success. Combined with Wind River´s distributed cloud capabilities, we are able to further improve our customer satisfaction by reducing the time to deploy and adding the quality of the process. This strengthens Elisa’s position as the leading digital service provider in automating operations and edge deployments," says Markus Kinnunen, Vice President, Cloud Services, Elisa.
“As a leader in the 5G landscape that powers the majority of 5G vRAN/O-RAN deployments with global operators, our Wind River Studio capabilities address service providers’ complex challenge of deploying and managing a physically distributed, ultra-low latency cloud-native infrastructure,” said Avijit Sinha, Chief Product Officer, Wind River. “Elisa is an innovator, and with their recent milestone, they are helping to advance the industry.”
Key to this achievement is the collaboration between the industry leaders. Wind River Studio provides a fully cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based architecture, based on open source, for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale. Elisa's 5G core UPF application enhances network performance, ensuring efficient and reliable data transmission and processing at the edge. Leveraging the advanced capabilities of Wind River Studio Conductor, the deployment process becomes fully automated, enabling rapid and efficient provisioning of edge data center resources.
The major outcomes can be grouped in three areas: time to prepare, time to deploy and quality of the process:
Time to prepare: The biggest savings came from parameter settings followed by environment preparation work. The team was able to execute hundreds of tests and scripts before going into live network in the same amount of time that it would typically take to manually run much fewer tests in the traditional model.
Time to deploy: The overall Operator time, measured in terms of staff hours, for commissioning the edge DC site from preparation, parameter settings to complete installation and testing is reduced by 90% as compared to doing the very same tasks manually. Furthermore, the overall deployment time is reduced by around 50% thanks to the automation of the processes.
Quality of the process: Finally, automation brings in additional benefits where multiple tasks can now be run in parallel with minimal probability of human errors, reducing time to service and enhancing network quality.
The successful implementation of this milestone project paves the way for future advancements in edge computing by Elisa. It sets a precedent for the seamless integration of Studio Cloud Platform, critical applications, and automation technologies, empowering industries to accelerate digital transformation and unlock new possibilities.
The collaborative effort involved in this achievement underscores the commitment of Elisa and its technology partner Wind River to drive innovation and push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of edge computing. Elisa continues to position itself as a leader in cutting-edge technologies, driving economic growth and benefits to the society.
AboutWind River
Wind River is a global leader in delivering software for mission-critical intelligent systems. For 40 years, the company has been an innovator and pioneer, powering billions of devices and systems that require the highest levels of security, safety, and reliability. Wind River software and expertise are accelerating digital transformation across industries, including automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial, medical, and telecommunications. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio supported by world-class professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem.
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Data Storage
Globenewswire | July 04, 2023
ABP and OMERS Infrastructure have today announced the signing of an agreement for the acquisition of Kenter from Alliander Corporate Ventures. Kenter is an energy infrastructure solutions business providing medium-voltage infrastructure – including transformers and switchgear – and meters to over 25,000 commercial and industrial business customers in the Netherlands and Belgium. This investment is done by APG Asset Management on behalf of ABP, the largest pension fund in the Netherlands; OMERS Infrastructure is investing on behalf of OMERS, one of the largest pension plans in Canada.
ABP and OMERS investment in Kenter will be the consortium’s second joint investment in the Dutch B2B energy solutions sector, after reaching close on their investment in Groendus in November last year. Groendus develops, builds and operates rooftop solar and storage solutions, meters and electric vehicle chargers for its commercial and industrial business customers, as well as providing access to its proprietary energy management system and energy marketplace, Groendus Energiemarktplaats. Upon close, the shareholders envision that Kenter and Groendus will partner to offer existing and new customers holistic, integrated energy solutions to support the decarbonization of their operations and help them reach their net zero goals.
Harmen van Wijnen, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at ABP, said: “ABP likes to invest in the Netherlands in order to stimulate economic growth, employment and sustainable projects. We also want to contribute to the energy transition and wholeheartedly support our nation's climate objectives. Therefore, investments in the electrification infrastructure are needed on a large scale. This investment benefits our three million participants in several ways. It not only contributes to sufficient and sustainably generated energy in the Netherlands but also generates long-term value for our pension participants.”
Jan-Willem Ruisbroek, Head of Global Infrastructure Investment Strategy at APG, said: “The energy transition is propelling the electrification trend in the Netherlands and across Europe, aligning with the ambitious climate targets set by the EU. To ensure its success, substantial investments in essential electrical infrastructure such as transformers, meters, batteries and electric vehicle chargers are imperative for our society. By investing in Kenter, building upon our previous venture with Groendus last year, we intensify our efforts. We are looking forward to working with the management teams and staff to establish a national champion in the energy transition sector the Netherlands and abroad.”
Alastair Hall, Senior Managing Director and Head of Europe, OMERS Infrastructure, said: “We’re thrilled to announce OMERS second investment to enable the energy transition in the Netherlands. We look forward to growing a B2B energy solutions platform in the region, delivering energy infrastructure for businesses looking to meet their sustainability goals.”
Erik van der Ende, CEO of Kenter, said: “I am delighted with the choice of ABP and OMERS Infrastructure. As an independent company, when it comes to the energy transition, we take care of all the needs of our existing and new customers by offering total solutions in the field of energy infrastructure. We operate in an extremely attractive growth market and this proposed sale makes it possible for Kenter to really take full advantage of our potential. We look forward to continuing to work on the energy transition together with our customers, employees, partners and new shareholders.”
APG and OMERS Infrastructure were advised by DC Advisory, Emendo Capital and Allen & Overy. The closing of the transaction is expected in Q4 2023, subject to customary regulatory approvals. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
About OMERS Infrastructure
OMERS Infrastructure manages infrastructure investments globally on behalf of OMERS, the defined benefit pension plan for municipal employees in the Province of Ontario, Canada, and third-party investors through its Strategic Partnership Program. OMERS Infrastructure manages approximately C$34 billion, including capital invested on behalf of OMERS and third parties, in over 30 investments located in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific and across sectors including energy, digital services, transportation and government-regulated services. OMERS Infrastructure has employees in Toronto, New York, the U.K., Amsterdam, Asia and Australia.
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