Electronic Payments Leader Uses Hitachi Storage Management Equipment and Software to Cut Data Migration Time in Half, Reduce Response Time by 90 Percent, Scale Up Capacity to Handle Growing Workloads
10 July 2000 — Aligning itself with a company that became a world leader in e-commerce long before anybody ever heard of e-commerce, Hitachi Data Systems today announced it has been selected as the primary provider of storage systems by Columbus, Georgia-based Total System Services, Inc., TSYS® (NYSE:TSS).
"In this ever-demanding and competitive environment, our clients throughout the world expect superior performance and availability of their data 24 hours a day, seven days a week. TSYS operates a very robust and dynamic information technology platform geared to satisfying our customers' access requirements to their data, literally, any time of day," said Marvin Lloyd, Associate Director of Technical Support for TSYS. "With the Hitachi 7700E, we believe we've chosen the right platform to provide us with the best that's offered in the industry today."
TSYS is the behind-the-scenes company that makes it such a hassle-free process for buyer and seller alike to record and settle their credit card transactions. With 179 million accounts online, TSYS is a dominant force in facilitating the exchange of payments in virtually all forms of e-commerce, including transactions conducted on the Internet, at point-of-sale terminals, and via catalogs and telephones, as well at gasoline stations, restaurants, and virtually anyplace else that accepts "plastic money."
In order to handle the vast amounts of data generated in arranging payments for clients conducting the various forms of e-commerce, TSYS operates a powerful mainframe system capable of executing 10 billion computer commands per second. Storage subsystems that provide up to 50 terabytes (TB) of capacity are attached to the mainframe to house almost all of this data. The Hitachi Freedom Storage™7700E accounts for about 90 percent of the total capacity installed at TSYS.
Among all the qualities of Hitachi Freedom Storage 7700E, its renowned "bullet-proof" reliability is a stellar attribute for TSYS. "Since first installing 7700-series storage in 1997, we've not encountered a single outage causing impact on client operations as a result of failure in Hitachi hardware or microcode," said Mike Rogers, TSYS Storage Administrator. "That's very important to us because that affects customer satisfaction and our own profitability."
Describing the challenges of continually growing the IT environment in order to keep up with increasing workloads, Lloyd said, "The scalability of the 7700E is incredible. Many times, we've been able to scale the existing equipment to meet workload demands from current and new clients without having to purchase additional disk-storage subsystems. We just plug in some more disk drives and keep on running, or move capacity from one set of processors to another as needed."
To illustrate this point, he explained that only one week after completing a capacity upgrade on an existing 7700E, TSYS determined that additional capacity was needed on a different set of multiprocessors. "The Hitachi Data Systems people were able to de-install the capacity on the first processors and reinstall it on another controller during the middle of the day with no impact whatsoever to the existing environment. This capacity was brought online and available for use on the new processors the same day, much to the satisfaction of our customer."
TSYS is also taking advantage of storage management software that comes with the 7700E. The ability to customize the size of data volumes on the fly is one feature that has been paying dividends in improved performance for customers. TSYS applies this feature to datasets that are mission-critical or are accessed very frequently. "We used the feature to customize the size of a particular dataset that is accessed by the majority of all our batch jobs," said Rogers. "As a result, we reduced the average response time from 157 milliseconds to 16 milliseconds, significantly improving our batch throughput rates."
Overall, installation of Hitachi Freedom Storage has enabled TSYS to demonstrate increased creativity and agility in satisfying unusual or unexpected demands of its clients. For example, in response to one client's request for extraordinary measures to isolate its data from that of all other clients, TSYS established a stand-alone data center for the client. Hitachi Data Systems' industry-leading Remote Copy function provided the ability to migrate more than 500 gigabytes (GB) of data to a 7700E in the new center, some eight miles away from the original, with very little disruption of the client's applications processing. Migration required less than half the time of the initial estimate, allowing TSYS once again to exceed its clients' expectations.
Committed to helping customers exploit the value of information technology for success in the Internet economy, Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT), is a leading provider of business solutions for the world's most information-intensive corporations. For further information on Hitachi Data Systems, access www.hds.com
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1999 (ended March 31, 2000) consolidated sales of 8,001 billion yen ($75.5 billion). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp.
1 At an exchange rate of 106 yen to the dollar.
About Total System Services, Inc. TSYS provides global commerce solutions. With more than 179 million accounts on file, TSYS facilitates the payment exchange between buyers and sellers. TSYS and its family of companies offer a full range of business services from credit application to collections for credit, debit, commercial, stored-value and retail accounts. Based in Columbus, Ga., TSYS (NYSE: "TSS") (www.totalsystem.com) is an 80.8 percent-owned subsidiary of Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE: "SNV") (www.synovus.com), No. 5 on FORTUNE magazine's list of "The 100 Best Companies To Work For" in 2000. For more information, contact news@totalsystem.com.
Contacts: PR
©2000, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All Rights Reserved/020/WCORP-078.
Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. Freedom Storage is a trademark of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. TSYS is a registered trademark of Total System Services, Inc.
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