Brodart Co., a Pennsylvania-based library solutions company that provides everything from shelf-ready books to electronic ordering systems and furniture, was seeking to upgrade to a virtual environment. With aging servers, they needed to get this done, but just having accomplished a major IT technology implementation they were unwilling to take on another lengthy project. After carefully evaluating various offerings from different providers, Brodart Co. felt that the Dell vStart 100 best met their needs. They worked closely with a Dell partner Interphase Systems.

What has vStart done for Brodart?

vStart has brought rapid, tangible value to Brodart Co., making Brad Huyck, manager of IT operations at Brodart, a very happy man. “The Dell vStart solution came completely racked and cabled, so all we had to do was plug it in,” he says. “It even included the power distribution units and uninterruptible power supplies. Just four weeks after we made the purchase, we were already achieving business value. That’s about six times faster than I expected. The benefits that we saw in the first week were just through the roof."

In addition to the fact that a vStart is pre-engineered, pre-built and includes deployment services, Brodart really liked the included Dell Management Plug-ins that enabled their IT personnel to easily manage the underpinning infrastructure. Within the first month of their vStart ownership, Brodart has accomplished the following:

• Virtualized 20 of their legacy servers, moving key applications to the vStart infrastructure
• Achieved 25% reduction in rack space requirement
• Achieved 90% reduction in server deployment time
• Improved performance and efficiency
• Simplified management with fewer consoles, using the included Dell Management Plug-Ins

Please click here to learn how Brodart is benefitting from their vStart deployment.

About vStart
vStart is a converged infrastructure solution that enables IT and business stakeholders to accelerate application and IT service delivery through pre-engineered, pre-built and pre-tested server, storage, network and management components that leverage VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platforms. For more information on vStart please visit Brodart case study.