Violin Memory Inc. (fka VMEMQ)

[Itza-Sherbet]

Swiss Telecom Leader Sunrise Communications Selects Violin Memory to Accelerate Billing Process -

http://www.violin-memory.com/news/press-releases/swiss-telecom-leader-sunrise-communications-selects-violin-memory-accelerate-billing-process/
Billing Times Reduced by More Than 75 Percent with Violin Flash Memory Arrays

Santa Clara, Calif., and London – Jan. 14, 2014 – Violin Memory, Inc. (NYSE: VMEM), a leader in persistent memory-based storage solutions, today announced that Sunrise Communications AG (Sunrise), the largest privately held telecommunications company in Switzerland, has chosen the Violin 6000 Series Flash Memory Array to accelerate the billing process for its nearly three million customers. By deploying the Violin solution, Sunrise reduced processing time for its mission critical billing application by more than 75 percent, streamlining operations and improving customer satisfaction. Sunrise was introduced to Violin Memory by its partner Lake Solutions, a comprehensive IT solutions provider, who guided the implementation.

Sunrise is the only private full service telecommunications provider in Switzerland and offers a wide range of services to business and consumer customers including mobile, landline, internet and IPTV. The Sunrise billing system is a business-critical process with strict time constraints requiring bills to be issued within a 48-hour window. More stringent internal service level requirements set a 24-hour completion goal to allow for potential re-runs. By deploying Violin Flash Memory Arrays, the company has seen processing time drop dramatically – a 76 percent improvement compared to the previous solution based on Fibre Channel disk drives complemented by Solid State Drives (SSD).

“Violin Flash Memory Arrays have proven to be a vast improvement compared to our previous system, which often forced us to bill in arrears,” said Detlef Steinmetz, CIO of Sunrise. “This is no longer the case as we now have a fast, reliable process. Our goal is to get the billing process down to less than one day and I’m confident that with Violin Memory we will be able to achieve this objective quickly and easily.”

Prior to switching to Violin, Sunrise struggled with a storage infrastructure that caused input/output (I/O) starvation and made the billing process unpredictable and unacceptably long. These performance bottlenecks also meant data back-up and critical applications were halted during the bill run, which impacted multiple areas of the business. Like many companies, Sunrise had other mission-critical requirements for its shared storage. Violin did not disrupt the existing environment and provided high reliability and no single point of failure.

“As a national telecommunications enterprise, Sunrise has demanding business requirements for its IT processes, and Violin Flash Memory Arrays have already shown that they can easily exceed them,” added Mick Bradley, managing director of Violin Memory EMEA. “I am thrilled to witness how once again Violin technology has enabled an organization to improve its performance, customer satisfaction, and bottom line.”