Storage virtualization solutions from IBM enabled Ricoh to help address their challenges, meet storage goals and stay within budget. IBM's smarter approach to storage - http://ibm.co/WivIFU.

1. IBM Systems and Technology Electronics
Case Study
Ricoh Americas
Corporation
Scalable, cost-efficient, virtualized storage with
IBM storage solutions
Ricoh Americas Corporation, headquartered in West Caldwell, New
Overview Jersey, is a subsidiary of Ricoh Company, Ltd., a 75-year-old leading pro-
vider of advanced office technology and innovative document imaging
The need
products, services and software.
Ricoh Americas Corporation needed
to refresh their storage environment to
accommodate growing storage needs Ricoh’s fully integrated hardware and customizable services and software
and increasing backup requirements— help businesses share information efficiently and effectively by enabling
without interrupting availability or
breaking the bank.
them to control the input, management and output of documents. Ricoh
Americas Corporation, directly or through its network of authorized
The solution dealers, markets and distributes products in North, Central and South
Ricoh partnered with IBM to deploy America.
IBM storage solutions, including
IBM System Storage® SAN Volume
Controller, in their infrastructure to sim- Explosive growth creates host of challenges
plify storage management and increase Over time, Ricoh’s IT department saw its data storage needed growing
efficiency.
by 20 percent annually due to expanding customer data archiving require-
The benefit ments and data center consolidation. And like many other companies
The IBM virtualized storage solution dealing with the complexity of a globally-distributed environment, the
provides efficient, cost-effective storage company needed to cost-effectively and efficiently integrate and upgrade
for the data center, enabling better man-
their storage environment.
agement of the storage environment and
a reduced hardware footprint.
“As we continue to see data growth year over year, it provides challenges
for us relative to backing up the environment in the timeframe we need,”
says David Levine, Vice President of Technology Infrastructure and End
User Services for Ricoh. “It also increases the strain on our resources by
way of equipment and recovery time.”
Marty Everett, Ricoh’s Director of Architecture and Solutions Design,
explains, “The amount of storage we have and the number of customers
we serve have all grown in size. The scope of our applications has wid-
ened and varied. The amount of responsibility that we have for things

2. IBM Systems and Technology Electronics
Case Study
corporate-wide and even internationally has expanded over time.”
In fact, Everett says the amount of storage Ricoh manages has jumped
“IBM SAN Volume from 500 terabytes to almost two petabytes of physical storage, plus
Controller allows us to 1.2 petabytes of virtual storage.
manage our storage This increase in storage was impacting the business in many ways, includ-
environment and do ing costs related to storage management that ranged from staffing to
significant work in the addressing tape backup requirements. “It’s really critical that we keep
the infrastructure up and running, efficiently and effectively, so that it is
storage space without available to our end users,” says Levine. He adds that this goal must be
interrupting or accomplished without negatively impacting end users in other ways.
impacting our
Addressing storage needs with IBM solutions
customers.” Storage virtualization solutions from IBM enabled Ricoh to help
address their challenges, meet storage goals and stay within budget.
—David Levine, Vice President of Technology Ricoh leveraged IBM’s virtual tape technology as well as virtual storage
Infrastructure and End User Services, Ricoh
technology in their IT environment—and found the two complemented
Americas Corporation
each other very well.
Ricoh implemented IBM XIV® Storage System, IBM System
Storage® TS7650G ProtecTIER® Deduplication Gateway and
IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller with very little
downtime or impact to their user base. Their storage environment is
now 85 percent virtualized.
“Storage virtualization has been key to providing efficient and cost-
effective storage solutions for our data center,” says Everett. “We have
maintained a lower price point and effectively managed the explosive
storage environment within our data center.”
“IBM SAN Volume Controller allows us to manage our storage environ-
ment and do significant work in the storage space without interrupting
or impacting our customers,” says Levine. It also enables Ricoh to
seamlessly migrate storage as necessary. “If we see performance issues,
we can move disk on the fly during the day, during production hours,
without our end users even being aware that their applications are
migrating,” explains Levine. This also allows them to perform clean
refreshes by moving data between subsystems. The company has also
implemented multi-tiering in their disk environment. IBM System
Storage Easy Tier® enables them to move applications and storage areas
to the appropriate tiering levels with no impact to end users.
2

3. IBM Systems and Technology Electronics
Case Study
Winning the storage game with virtualization
Solution components According to Levine, virtualizing Ricoh’s storage environment has been a
game changer for the company. They’ve drastically lowered storage costs
Hardware
by consolidating their hosts, enabling them to manage more storage with
• IBM System Storage® DS8000® series
• IBM System Storage TS7650G
less staff. And as for their sustainability and energy concerns, because
ProtecTIER® Deduplication Gateway Ricoh now has fewer storage devices, they ultimately consume less power.
• IBM XIV® Storage System
Software The IBM solution also minimizes downtime. “We no longer need large
• IBM System Storage Easy Tier® outages to move data or perform refreshes,” adds Levine.
• IBM System Storage SAN Volume
Controller The company’s storage infrastructure includes a variety of other
• IBM Global Mirror
• IBM Tivoli® Storage Productivity
IBM solutions, including an IBM XIV Storage System and an
Center IBM System Storage DS8000® series. Levine says this variety enables
• IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy® them to fit the right kind of disk profile with the right kind of application.
Manager
The IBM SAN Volume Controller sits on top of all disk arrays, which
makes a large number of storage units look like a single storage
infrastructure.
“Storage virtualization
has been key to providing Everett explains, “This single user interface allows us to view the perfor-
mance and interaction of the systems with the storage, so we can proac-
efficient and cost-effective tively recognize problems before they occur and move storage around,
storage solutions for our if necessary. It enables us to recognize performance peaks and properly
provision storage so that peaks are no longer an issue.”
data center.”
Navigating future growth—with IBM
—Marty Everett, Directory of Architecture
“Having streamlined tools and solutions really enables us to manage
and Solutions Design, Ricoh Americas
Corporation the disk systems and subsystems to optimize storage capacity and
performance—it really helps us control growth,” says Levine. “By having
efficient storage systems and solutions, we can provide the best perfor-
mance to our customers and end users. “
On the software side, Ricoh’s use of IBM solutions includes the
IBM Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center software suite to help manage
the environment, IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy® Manager to provide
fast application-aware backups and restores using advanced snapshot tech-
nologies, and IBM Global Mirror to make test copies in development
environments.
“We are a big IBM shop here at Ricoh,” says Levine. “We truly view
IBM as a partner—and IBM has been an outstanding partner for us over
the years.”
3

4. For more information
Contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit us at:
ibm.com/storage
For more information about Ricoh Americas Corporation, visit:
www.ricoh-usa.com
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012
IBM Systems and Technology Group
Route 100
Somers, New York 10589
U.S.A.
Produced in the United States of America
March 2012
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, DS8000, Easy Tier, FlashCopy,ProtecTIER, System
Storage, Tivoli, and XIV are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp.,
registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be
trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on
the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed
by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which
IBM operates.
The client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual
performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating
conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED
“AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF
NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and
conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.
Actual available storage capacity may be reported for both uncompressed and
compressed data and will vary and may be less than stated.
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