Masternaut, a UK based telematics provider, has introduced Dell Storage to its IT infrastructure to improve performance, reduce costs and support future expansion.

The ability to carry out software upgrades quickly, and with no additional costs or interruption to its services, means that Masternaut has been able to double the amount of vehicles that it is able to manage on each storage platform without needing to make an additional financial investment. Moving forward, Dell’s flexible scale out design means that if the company requires more storage capacity it simply has to add more spindles.

Masternaut tracks and monitors drivers, vehicles and mobile assets across Europe, processing, analysing and storing around 150 million data transactions every day. The real-time information captured by these transactions covers everything from vehicle movements and whereabouts, alarm activations and driver performance. Insights gleaned from this intelligence enables its customers to reduce the cost of running fleets by better managing fuel consumption, fleet coordination and responsible driving, leading to reduced fuel costs, improved efficiency and lower insurance premiums.

Martin Hiscox, chairman and CEO, Masternaut comments on the benefits of introducing Dell Storage: "We are constantly working to improve the quality of service that we deliver to our customers and working with Dell Storage has both supported our immediate need for high performance and resilience and our longer term goal for a cost effective and scalable architecture, which can grow alongside our business."

Masternaut carried out a hardware upgrade and invested in a single Dell Compellent SC40 array which ran 200 disks and supported 50 terabytes of data. A year later, Masternaut then extended this infrastructure with three additional Dell Compellent SC8000 Controllers, each with 200 drives. Two of the arrays are located in France and the other two in the UK which could support 350 terabytes of data. The expansion of Masternaut’s Dell storage infrastructure was completed in six hours with zero downtime and without the need to shut down the application platform.

Dell Storage is aiming to allow Masternaut to enhance its overall performance and expand its storage infrastructure, said Aisling Keegan, general manager and executive director, Preferred Accounts, Dell UK: "At Dell, we understand that in today’s economic climate, keeping an eye on costs is more vital than ever for businesses and their customers. Dell Storage offers businesses the ability to enhance their scalability and performance, as well as carry out software updates at no additional cost. This allows them to easily expand their storage architecture without the need to ‘rip and replace’ their existing infrastructure. Masternaut is a prime example of how Dell can significantly improve the performance of a company’s supporting storage infrastructure; helping them take their product to market quicker and grow the business more effectively."