Challenge: Remain competitive in the hosted communication and collaboration services market with the agility and flexibility to respond to customer needs. Solution: Migrate customers to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on a seamless, integrated NetApp storage platform, with performance boosted by the NetApp Virtual Storage Tier.

1. Success Story
Apptix Saves More Than
$1 Million with NetApp
Storage Efficiencies
Another NetApp
solution delivered by:
Customer Profile The storage platform supporting the
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Apptix is a premier provider of hosted company’s Microsoft Exchange 2007 and
Industry business communication, collaboration, Microsoft SharePoint 2007 environments
Cloud Services compliance and security, and infra- had reached capacity. The platform lacked
structure solutions to businesses of all the scalability and manageability needed
The Challenge sizes, with particular expertise support- to migrate customers to Microsoft
Remain competitive in the hosted ing legal, financial, healthcare, and tele- Exchange 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint
communication and collaboration communications firms. Headquartered 2010, and to expand its offerings with
services market with the agility in Herndon, Virginia, Apptix has been in a virtual desktop service. With more
and flexibility to respond to operation for over a decade and currently than 300,000 Microsoft Exchange users
customer needs. serves more than 350,000 users around depending on Apptix hosted communi-
the world. cations, tight integration between its
The Solution
storage platform and Microsoft Exchange
Migrate customers to Microsoft® The Challenge is vital to meeting stringent service-level
Exchange Server 2010 on a Delivering advanced communication agreements (SLAs).
seamless, integrated NetApp® and collaboration services
storage platform, with performance Apptix is known for delivering reliable, Apptix needed a storage solution with
boosted by the NetApp Virtual easy-to-manage hosted services that the flexibility to efficiently roll out its
Storage Tier. help customers reduce expenses while services to new customers and help
improving their operations. The compa- optimize storage resources as its ser-
Benefits
ny’s flagship cloud-based communica- vices and customer base grow. “We
tion and collaboration services based were ready to move beyond the limita-
saving more than $1 million
on Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft tions and inefficiencies of our previous
in IT expenditures
SharePoint® solutions help companies storage environment,” says Brian Nes-
stay connected anywhere, anytime. bit, director of Engineering, Research,
Microsoft Exchange 2010
To remain competitive in the crowded and Development at Apptix.
hosted service market, Apptix must
The company worked closely with
deliver its cloud services from a cost-
ePlus, a technology solutions provider
effective infrastructure that enables
and NetApp Star Partner, to find a robust,
high-availability, high-performance
seamless, unified platform for managing
business solutions.
physical and virtual resources. It also

2. “NetApp data storage and management allow us
to take full advantage of the Microsoft Exchange
2010 database availability while consuming
75% less total storage than our previous storage
solution. As a result, we are able to offer our
customers twice the level of data redundancy
while decreasing our total cost of ownership
by 60% and saving over $1M in 2011 alone.”
Shane Smith
Senior Vice President, Information Technology, Apptix, Inc.
required a network-attached storage protocols backed by industry-leading storage efficiency technologies—for its
(NAS) solution with NFS and CIFS pro- value-added functionality enhance- Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft
tocol support to help simplify Microsoft ments—all without sacrificing ease SharePoint workloads. The Virtual
Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint Storage Tier provides Apptix with the
data management and improve reliability a storage manager uses a NetApp
and availability. Apptix selected NetApp product, [he or she] can quickly storage efficiency, and the number of
storage to support its Microsoft Exchange leverage those skills for other NetApp Microsoft Exchange 2010 mailboxes
2010, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, and products and gain maximum value supported. Apptix achieves additional
virtual desktop environments. from the NetApp solutions.” efficiencies using NetApp deduplication,
which enables the company to reduce
The Solution The company delivers its Microsoft storage requirements in its Microsoft
A seamless, integrated storage Exchange 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint
platform 2010 hosted collaboration and commu-
Apptix supports its communication nication services to customers and its ™
and collaboration services with NetApp corporate staff on NetApp storage. The Unified Manager offers a complete view
FAS3270 storage systems both in its cloud solutions on NetApp include an into NetApp storage resources. The
primary data center in Texas and in its enterprise-class e-mail service with Apptix IT team manages and monitors
disaster recovery site in Florida. The advanced calendaring, task, and contact its storage, with detailed reports on
company leverages FAS3210 and capabilities, with the scalability to fit any utilization and trend information to
FAS3140 storage systems in its lab size business. The hosted collaboration assist with capacity planning. NetApp
®
8.0 and content management solution on MultiStore® software provides Apptix
software provides a flexible unified NetApp offers customers secure docu- with secure multi-tenancy for its growing
architecture that supports Apptix’s ment sharing and workflows. Leveraging business communication and collabo-
multiprotocol, multi-tenant requirements best-in-class technology housed in SAS ration customers, with the ability to host
in a common platform with common thousands of customers on a single,
software. The FAS3270 offers native Apptix delivers its cloud solutions over integrated NetApp storage platform.
support for all key NAS and storage- a highly reliable network, and backs its
services with 24/7 customer support. SnapManager ® for Microsoft Exchange
area network (SAN) protocols, including
Server helps Apptix automate complex,
iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, and CIFS.
Apptix optimizes NetApp storage time-consuming processes associated
This gives Apptix the flexibility to con-
system performance and improves the with the backup, recovery, and verifica-
solidate its mixed IT environment on
customer experience with the NetApp tion of its Microsoft Exchange Server
NetApp and optimize the value of
Virtual Storage Tier driven by 512GB databases. The company protects valu-
other IT investments.
NetApp Flash Cache cards in its able customer data with NetApp capa-
“Unlike other storage solutions I’ve FAS3270 storage systems. The company bilities such as Single Mailbox Recovery,
worked with, NetApp offers seamless leverages the Virtual Storage Tier— which provides new revenue streams
technologies that offer a breadth of with its intelligent caching and NetApp for Apptix as a fee-based service.

3. Primary Data Center Disaster Recovery Data Center
Microsoft Microsoft Virtual Storage
SharePoint 2010 Exchange 2010 Tier
NetApp Flash Cache
iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, FC
NetApp SnapManager for Exchange
Single Mailbox Recovery
Firewall
NetApp FAS3270c NetApp FAS3270c NetApp FAS3270c
Running NetApp Running NetApp
Data ONTAP 8.0 Data ONTAP 8.0
VMware Infrastructure
NetApp Deduplication NetApp SnapManager for MS Exchange
NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager
NetApp MultiStore
Mailbox Server Mailbox Server Mailbox Server Mailbox Server
Passive Copy Lagged Copy Active Copy Passive Copy
Figure 1) Apptix storage infrastructure.
Apptix optimizes NetApp storage system performance and improves the customer experience with the NetApp Virtual Storage Tier driven by 512GB
NetApp Flash Cache cards in its FAS3270 storage systems.
The company can recover and restore us in providing our customers always- Just as the Apptix cloud delivery model
individual mailboxes, e-mail messages on services while offering us a more reduces capex and opex costs for its
and attachments, calendar items, deleted dynamic, cost-effective infrastructure.” customers, NetApp manageability and
items, and contacts in minutes. Apptix Apptix’s advanced service delivery net- efficiency capabilities such as dedupli-
combines NetApp data protection with cation enable Apptix to significantly
disaster recovery capabilities from uptime SLA. reduce its storage hardware and
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, which operational costs. The IT staff manages
Managing storage as a unified set
provides database-level failover and of services
replication to the disaster recovery site. equivalent of one-fourth of a full-time
From a single NetApp console, Apptix
employee. “NetApp data storage and
Business Benefits storage managers can view the entire
management allow us to take full
Better performance at reduced costs NetApp FAS3200 and FAS3100 series
advantage of the Microsoft Exchange
By consolidating on NetApp storage storage infrastructure as a single pool
2010 database availability while con-
and taking advantage of efficiencies of storage and unified set of services.
with the Virtual Storage Tier, Apptix has previous storage solution. As a result,
reduced its storage footprint and total we are able to offer our customers
cost of ownership. The Virtual Storage Apptix the visibility needed to optimize
twice the level of data redundancy
Tier reduces Apptix’s storage, power, NetApp storage and reduce overall IT
while decreasing our total cost of own-
and rack-space costs and increases spend by utilizing storage resources
storage utilization by optimizing the more efficiently.
2011 alone,” says Shane Smith, senior
performance of random read–intensive NetApp MultiStore provides additional vice president of Information Technology
Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft management capabilities and opportu- at Apptix. “We’re able to invest the
SharePoint workloads. With intelligent nities to improve storage efficiency. money saved into positioning our
caching rather than traditional automated With MultiStore, Apptix can consolidate company for unprecedented growth.”
storage tiering, Apptix benefits from file servers and streamline data migra- Responding to today’s and
tion, which increases staff productivity tomorrow’s needs
add more hard disk drives or increase and reduces costs. The partitioned,
storage management complexity. The NetApp FAS3200 series storage
multi-tenant environment provides system helps Apptix optimize its IT
Apptix customers with the utmost budget, reduce risk, and scale for
and financial institutions depend on security and privacy. MultiStore offers growth. The midrange storage system
continuous high performance in their Apptix a shared storage infrastructure provides Apptix with a cost-effective
Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft that is highly responsive, easy to man- environment for mixed workloads that
SharePoint environments,” emphasizes age, and cost-effective to deploy, and protects the company’s investment
allows the company to quickly roll out through its inherent scalability. The
for performance as well as cost, the services to new customers. FAS3200 series storage system further
NetApp Virtual Storage Tier supports

4. “Unlike other storage solutions I’ve worked with,
NetApp offers seamless technologies that offer a
breadth of protocols backed by industry-leading
value-added functionality enhancements—all
without sacrificing ease of management.”
Brian Nesbit
Director of Engineering, Research and Development, Apptix, Inc.
enhances the high-availability NetApp
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
architecture by enabling additional
diagnostics and nondisruptive recovery. NetApp Products Protocols
“The superior processing power of NetApp FAS3270, FAS3210, iSCSI
the FAS3200 series system, combined and FAS3140 storage systems NFS
with the optimal number of shelves CIFS
and slots, enables us to effectively Flash Cache FC
deliver our cloud services to our cus-
tomer base while spreading out fewer Third-Party Products
customers across more clusters to SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
reduce service risk,” says Nesbit. Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
“Just as important, the system scales Single Mailbox Recovery
to several petabytes. With plans to MultiStore
continue to migrate Hosted Exchange
Deduplication
customers to Microsoft Exchange
Server 2010 on NetApp and to launch
our virtual desktop service from
NetApp, we are well positioned to
grow and to respond to future oppor-
tunities in the cloud services market.”
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