Billion Automobile Chooses Tegile Systems to Improve Storage Performance Across Its 16-Dealer Network

NEWARK, CA, February 02, 2013 (Press-News.org) Tegile Systems, a pioneer in primary storage de-duplication in virtualized server and desktop environments, announced today that Billion Automobile, GMC's fourth largest U.S. dealership, has implemented Tegile's Zebi Storage Array to serve its host of databases, file services, ADP data, as well as deliver strong performance for a positive experience to the company's 500 virtual desktop users.

Billion Automobile is a large Midwest auto dealership with 16 locations in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The family-owned company, which was founded in 1935, has 900 employees, 100 of them are delivering cars in the field, 800 located at dealerships. Five hundred employees are Virtual Desktop Integration (VDI) clients. Billion Auto also operates one of the nation's largest automobile website.

According to Kevin Huber, manager of client development, IT Outlet, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the reseller on the project, Billion Auto's number one driver was pressure from its VDI users. "Sales people working in our lots were simply unable to do their job because performance was so slow on their client devices. It was directly impacting our ability to generate revenue. So the ability to improve performance for users was a key consideration. The company also wanted to address scalability in order to accommodate further aggressive growth when we move the datacenter to an offsite co-location facility."

In order to address its range of needs, Billion Automobile evaluated IBM's V7000 but decided that Tegile Systems arrays were the best option for the company.

"Tegile's Zebi array was the only hybrid hdd array we saw with in-line de-duplication," said Huber, "We knew that would work great with our VDI users. We ran a proof of concept with both IBM and Tegile and the Zebi array was a clear winner."

According to Billion Auto's IT Manager, Tom Likely, "The in-line compression and de-duplication reduced the company's capacity footprint by over 70% since the project came online last month. It is fast enough to support our virtualized server, VDI users and we are confident it will handle the two new databases coming over without a problem. Now we don't worry about storage performance, we look at performance for about 15 minutes a day and are always pleased with the numbers we get. We don't have to worry about the 500 people at the 16 dealerships unable to work anymore, everything just operates as advertised."

In addition, Billion Auto intends to consolidate all its applications onto its VMware server virtualization platform. "Big applications are next on the platform and will include the parts database, the body shop database and file sharing," said Tom Mullen, director of IT for Billion Auto.

"Billion Automobile is an excellent example of a company who was in a high-growth mode and had to quickly evolve it's VDI technology to accommodate that growth," said Rob Commins, vice president of marketing, Tegile Systems. "Their users were experiencing challenges every single day. Billion Auto found it critical to achieve best-in-class performance, while handling scalability issues. By leveraging Tegile solutions Billion Auto believes it has achieved its goals and can now provide better service to its users and ultimately its customers."

About Billion Auto
Billion Automobile is the upper Midwest's largest car dealer, carrying over 5,000 autos and is ranked in the country's top sellers for Chevrolet and GMC. Billion provides over 50% of the parts used by other repair shops in the local area. With locations in multiple states, Billion Auto is quickly becoming a leader in the auto world. A family run business since 1935, Billion Auto ensures that people familiar with the area understand they are getting trust with the Billion name. Visit www.billionauto.com for more information.

About Tegile Systems
Tegile Systems is pioneering a new generation of enterprise storage arrays that balance performance, capacity, features and price for virtualization, file services and database applications. With Tegile's Zebi line of hybrid storage arrays, the company is redefining the traditional approach to storage by providing a family of arrays that is significantly faster than all hard disk-based arrays and significantly less expensive than all solid-state disk-based arrays.

Tegile's patent-pending MASS technology accelerates the Zebi's performance and enables on-the-fly de-duplication and compression of data so each Zebi has a usable capacity far greater than its raw capacity. Tegile's award-winning technology solutions enable customers to better address the requirements of server virtualization, virtual desktop integration and database integration than other offerings. Featuring both NAS and SAN connectivity, Tegile arrays are easy-to-use, fully redundant, and highly scalable. They come complete with built-in auto-snapshot, auto-replication, near-instant recovery, onsite or offsite failover, and virtualization management features. Additional information is available at www.tegile.com. Follow Tegile on Twitter @tegile.