The U.S. Postal Service carries 206 billion pieces of mail or other information for people across the country each year, but who helps the agency manage that
glut of data?
Answer: EMC, thanks to a new five-year, $30 million contract the company
signed with the USPS.
Under an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, the Hopkinton,
Mass., maker of information management systems will provide certain software
applications to help the USPS improve the way it manages the Symmetrix and
Clariion networked storage servers it purchased from EMC.
USPS will now use EMC ControlCenter to monitor and manage its
Symmetrix and Clariion machines; EMC Centera for content
addressed storage (CAS); and EMC SRDF and EMC TimeFinder to provide
non-disruptive access to data.
Currently, the USPS has about 650 terabytes of EMC storage capacity to house
data from its Web site, postal tracking systems, financial, human resources
and retail applications. The storage systems support mainframes and servers
located in USPS data centers in Eagan, Minn., and San Mateo, Calif.
Terms of the deal also call for EMC Consulting to work with USPS to conduct
an infrastructure assessment and provide project management and design and
implementation services.
USPS said in a statement the deal will help it bring its Enterprise Storage
Platform Requirement, an initiative to build out and upgrade the USPS
storage infrastructure, to fruition. It will also ensure business continuity
and disaster recovery.
USPS Vice President and CTO Bob Otto said the contract
will help USPS meet the increase of data from servers and mainframes.
“Not only are we experiencing 200 percent storage growth in certain
operations, but our storage environment is becoming increasingly layered,”
said Otto.
Otto’s reference to a layered storage environment is a solid validation for
EMC, which has spent the last few years hawking its vision of information
lifecycle management (ILM). ILM is a strategy to help customers maintain
data from its inception until it is ready to be destroyed.
In ILM, data is often prioritized, meaning it is placed with varying levels
of storage and retrieval policies based on the importance of the data. For
example, important or frequently accessed files are usually kept in high
functioning, more expensive storage in a network. Minor files may be placed
with less expensive storage.
That a major government agency is upgrading its existing technology
foundation is good news for vendors, such as EMC, which vies for space in
corporate data centers with IBM, HP, Hitachi Data Systems and a slew of
smaller storage gear providers.
The deal points to the increasing glut of data.
Some of the data, such as patients’ X-rays from health care providers, will
likely have to be stored for many years under new federal compliance
regulations, such as HIPAA.
