Tailor-made data storage for manufacturer of tailor-made tools

"Innovation is in our blood. We have been working digitally for decades. It starts with tool design and 2D/3D drawings in the CAD programs and does not end with computer-aided, highly automated production. The amount of data we generate is enormous," continues Strutzenberger. No wonder, then, that storage is a business-critical issue for HAIDLMAIR. However, the old system that had been running in HAIDLMAIR's data center for seven years, was showing its age. It was full and running slowly. What's more, the technology was outdated. It was time for a change. We were looking for a new infrastructure that would catapult us into the future of data storage," says Strutzenberger, explaining the company's requirements. With this in mind, the IT manager turned to MAIT, a service provider he trusted. And they presented HAIDLMAIR with an entirely new approach to storage: HPE GreenLake. The idea: instead of buying new hardware, the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform relies on a flexible and cost-effective pay-as-you-use model. This means that HAIDLMAIR can deploy a modern storage infrastructure without high investment costs, and is only charged for what is actually used each month.

Tailored storage

"HPE GreenLake was a perfect fit for HAIDLMAIR," explains Gerhard Wipplinger. The MAIT sales expert, who has been providing HAIDLMAIR with a range of managed services for many years, knows exactly why. The keyword here is overprovisioning. "With the amount of data HAIDLMAIR generates, it's extremely difficult to predict how much storage space will actually be needed in the future. And just to be on the safe side, the purchase option often leads to oversizing. With HPE GreenLake, you don't have to worry about that," says Wipplinger. What he means is that even if the new storage architecture tailored to HAIDLMAIR's current needs quickly becomes too small, the HPE GreenLake platform allows new capacity to be added at the touch of a button.

Still, Strutzenberger admits there was a lot of skepticism about the new storage approach at first. "It sounded exciting, but we still had a lot of questions, especially about access and security. After all, data is our greatest asset in the face of international competition. But our concerns were quickly allayed," says the IT manager. The old HPE 3PAR systems were replaced by MAIT, which also provided managed services for the smooth operation of the HAIDLMAIR storage, and all data was migrated to new, redundant all-flash systems from HPE Primera with latency times of less than 1 ms. As an added benefit, the HPE Primera storage components provided advanced technologies such as deduplication and compression at a rate of around 1:2, which allowed the company to reduce its existing storage requirements at the same time. The storage savings in concrete terms: 14 percent. And thanks to HPE GreenLake and pay-as-you-use billing, there is full cost control.

The future of storage drives digital transformation

Strutzenberger has no regrets about moving to an entirely new IT model with the HPE GreenLake platform. On the contrary, he’s excited about the flexibility and opportunities the new architecture will open up for him in the future. The big theme: Industry 4.0. "We know that our data has tremendous potential. We are working to unlock that potential by linking and analyzing data," says Strutzenberger. The importance of Industry 4.0 for HAIDLMAIR is demonstrated by the fact that the model medium-sized company, together with toolmaker Siegfried Hofmann, has founded Digital Moulds, a subsidiary specializing in the monitoring and management of tools used in injection molding processes. HAIDLMAIR is contributing its many years of experience and technological expertise. The result is cloud-based software solutions that monitor molds used in production processes in real time and enables digital predictive maintenance. Strutzenberger concludes: “Whether in our own production or for our customers, Industry 4.0 is our way forward. And the new, flexible storage model is the basis for us to drive our own digital transformation at full speed.”