HPE Hero Partner | Cristie Data
JUNE 17, 2019 • BLOG POST
IN THIS ARTICLE
- Cristie Data, an iomart company, have been a trusted, innovative and leading edge data storage, backup and virtualisation solutions provider across all sectors of industry in the UK for over 40 years. Cristie Data is a Gold Hybrid IT HPE partner, giving them access to the full storage, compute and networking portfolio from HPE.
When the University of Bristol was looking for a new type of storage, Cristie Data had the answer
Cristie Data, HPE and University of Bristol
The Story: The University of Bristol was looking for a new type of storage to tackle two big problems: rising IT costs, and the scalability required to handle the increasingly high and complex demands of the users of the system. A hybrid storage solution was deemed the best fix, with a reputation for being faster and easier to manage than hard-disk only systems.
Delivered by Cristie Data, the Nimble Storage solution converges storage, data protection and disaster recovery into a single offering, while allowing the IT team to adapt quickly to the changing needs of its staff and students.
The Solution: The storage solution sold into Bristol University has been entirely based on HPE Nimble Storage solutions with HPE Infosight technology. Nimble storage was originally purchased through Cristie Data in 2014. The University has since been gradually moving their entire production estate to run on HPE Nimble, through Cristie Data.
The impact: This new infrastructure has helped drastically reduce rising IT costs, eliminate the down-time of IT systems whenever upgrades or repairs are necessary (meaning no impact on staff and students at the University), and simultaneously reduce the time and resources required for basic maintenance and problem solving. The new and improved Storage platform from HPE Nimble, delivered by Cristie Data, gave the University a perfect balance of cost and performance, whilst also allowing ease of visibility of data capacity and throughput metrics with the HPE Infosight platform. This, in turn, allows the team to provide immediate feedback on existing workloads, and also to analyse the impact of new projects on the platform through modelling.
A big business benefit identified by the University was the speed of change – Cristie Data and HPE were in a position to help the customer change their platform quickly, in line with their business needs.
Q&A with Ryan Smith, Sales Director at Cristie Data
How does working with HPE compare to working with other technology vendors?
Working with HPE on this ongoing project, and others we have delivered in partnership, has allowed us to provide more flexibility and predictability as the customer adapts to changing demands and requirements. It has been key for us to be able to advise on growth patterns and performance peaks, which has been enabled by the HPE Nimble tools.
How does the HPE portfolio and partner programs, trainings and executive support help you win business and grow?
As a Gold Hybrid IT partner we receive enhanced support and training from HPE across the service portfolio. This helps us to stand out technically and provide commercially attractive solutions that meet the budgetary challenges that our customers, particularly those in the public sector, often face. Ultimately our customers get a much higher level of technical support because of the partner relationship we have.
How do you go above and beyond for your customers?
Cristie Data are a true Value Added Reseller, providing skilled in-house resource for Pre-Sales design, implementation services, project management, support and extended managed services. Our team takes the time to understand customers’ particular challenges and design solutions to maximise value and return on investment. Our support team often goes above and beyond with diagnosing complex support issues, escalating to vendors where necessary and managing the fix with the customer.