IRVINE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 04/02/08 -- Vision Solutions, the leading high availability and disaster recovery solutions provider in IBM Power Systems markets (NYSE: IBM), today announced Norcal Waste Systems, Inc. and their IT team are realizing a significant return on their ORION HA and Vision Director software investments.

Norcal serves more than 570,000 residential and 55,000 commercial customers -- business continuity and IT efficiency are critical. The company runs in-house-developed customer service system, JD Edwards financials and Web applications on a daily basis. To select the right high availability and optimization solutions, Norcal turned to Key Information Systems, Inc., an IBM Premier Business Partner who recommended ORION HA for i5/OS and Vision Director.

"We chose Vision Solutions' ORION HA software to make sure these vital systems are up and running much more quickly in the event of a disruption," says Oscar Campos, lead operator at Norcal. "And it's great that ORION HA allows us to pick and choose what we want to replicate."

"We're pleased to see the continuing success of ORION HA in enterprise-class environments such as Norcal," says Henry Martinez, senior vice president of engineering for Vision Solutions. "ORION continues to be a reliable, go-to product in the industry's most complex, high-volume transaction rate settings."

Norcal also became aware that optimization could be valuable for its IBM System i environments. "Before we implemented replication software, we needed to do some cleaning up, and we saw that an operational tool could help us do that efficiently," Campos says. "And when we upgraded from JDE World to OneWorld, we used Vision Director to locate and clean up millions of deleted records estimated to be worth more than 20 percent of the total storage -- this fact alone justifies the purchase of the software."

"With Vision Director, I can easily and effectively retrieve information on what jobs were run at what times and I can see the size of system objects and libraries," adds Mike McLaughlin, director of operations for Norcal. "We're saving significant storage space and avoiding problems like latency issues and application hold-ups."

Norcal replicates data from San Francisco to its site in Vacaville, California. They have three LPARs on an IBM i550 and recently added a third partition to their i520 in Vacaville for development. They perform periodic tests for integrity, reporting success with ORION HA.

Overall, ORION HA and Vision Director have helped Norcal to:

--  reduce storage requirements and costs.
--  increase IT team efficiency and productivity.
--  support effective IT planning for storage space and task management.
--  provide IT system continuity for a business that provides a vital
    regional service.
    

Vision Director helps increase efficiency and productivity for the Norcal IT team and for its developers. "This allows me to focus on other projects because I can see the sizes of objects and libraries rapidly on screen without having to run time-consuming reports," Campos says. "The product is great and the fact that we recovered 257GB from just one expansion saved us more than $12,000."

"It's wonderful how much benefit Norcal realized from Vision Director and it's a story we hear frequently from others installing our products," says Paul Wade, director of SMB products for Vision Solutions. "Companies are taking more interest in disk utilization and eliminating inefficient practices -- a reflection of social trends as well as rising skill costs. There's a lot of buzz in Systems Management circles about being more green and less wasteful. Fortunately, Vision Solutions has the experience and software to help."

"With ORION HA and Vision Director, we're prepared to keep Norcal systems on line in the event of an emergency -- and even improve our internal storage space issues on a daily basis," Campos concluded.

About Vision Solutions

Vision Solutions, Inc. is the world's leading provider of high availability, disaster recovery and data management solutions for IBM® System i and System p platforms. With a portfolio spanning the industry's most innovative and trusted HA solutions from ORION(TM), MIMIX® and iTERA(TM) brands, Vision keeps critical businesses information continuously protected and available. Affordable and easy to use, Vision products ensure business continuity, increase productivity, reduce operating costs and satisfy compliance requirements. Vision also offers advanced cluster management and systems management solutions, and support for i5/OS®, Windows®, and AIX® operating environments. As IBM's largest high availability Premier Business Partner (NYSE: IBM), Vision Solutions oversees a global network of business partners and services and support professionals to help our customers achieve their business goals. Privately held by Thoma Cressey Bravo, Inc., Vision Solutions is headquartered in Irvine, California with offices worldwide. For more information visit www.visionsolutions.com or call 800.957.4511.

Add to DiggBookmark with del.icio.usAdd to Newsvine

CONTACT:
Debbie Madoni Lewis
Phone: 801.541.7769
Email Contact