Pier 1 Selects McDATA’s SANavigator

McDATA today announced that Pier 1 Imports has standardized on McDATA’s SANavigator software and hardware SAN solutions to lower its IT costs and ensure the highest levels of data access and reliability. McDATA sais that its SANavigator and core-to-edge SAN have allowed Pier 1 to mitigate costs while keeping pace with rapidly growing data volumes — from four terabytes two years ago to the current, and still rising, 19 terabytes.

Pier 1 Imports, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is an international retailer with nearly 1,000 stores and annual sales of $1.5 billion.

“SANavigator has helped us keep our management costs down,” said Sam Scott, manager of enterprise systems for Pier 1. “Unless you have the right tools, you’re in a reactive mode, but SANavigator allows us to manage our storage infrastructure proactively. That makes our IT staff more productive and, in turn, our business more effective. Pier 1 is very satisfied with SANavigator.”

IT managers at Pier 1 needed SAN management software that was easy to deploy and use but also provided a high level of control over their entire fabric not currently found in competing products. Pier 1’s IT staff is tasked with managing a large, complex SAN comprised of over 120 servers, several McDATA Intrepid 6000 Series Directors and Sphereon(TM) 3000 Series Fabric Switches, multiple HBAs and IBM storage. After evaluating several solutions, Pier 1 chose McDATA’s SANavigator, primarily for its historical performance reporting and other diagnostics features.

“The McDATA SAN deployment at Pier 1 is a great example of how a McDATA solution can, through a combination of our industry-leading software and hardware products, increase business efficiencies and lower costs for customers of any size or industry,” said Greg Fahey, vice president of global software sales for McDATA. “McDATA’s award-winning SANavigator significantly eases the management of complex storage networks by providing proactive, policy-based management through a single point of control. No other software product on the market today rivals SANavigator in its simplicity and comprehensive fabric management.”