Challenge: Provide ready access to millions of digital photos for consumers and fulfillment labs and meet the company’s growing business requirements. Solution: Implement a high-performance, highly scalable storage infrastructure that includes NetApp FAS6280, FAS3280, and FAS3170 storage systems.

1. Success Story
PNI Digital Media Increases
Photo Orders and Profits
with NetApp Storage
Customer Profile for retailers at thousands of locations
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
PNI Digital Media operates the PNI worldwide. The company’s big data
Industry Digital Media Platform, which provides storage requirements continue to grow
Digital Media transaction processing and order right along with its system performance
routing services for major retailers. requirements.
The Challenge The PNI Digital Media Platform con-
Provide ready access to millions “We store millions of digital photo-
nects consumer-ordered digital content,
of digital photos for consumers graphs, with millions accessed daily
whether from online sources, in-store
and fulfillment labs and meet the by consumers and the fulfillment labs
kiosks, desktop software, or mobile
company’s growing business that process their orders,” says Zack
phones, with retailers that have on-
requirements. Wickes, vice president of Technology
demand manufacturing capabilities
at PNI. “Through acquisitions and
The Solution for the production of personalized
successful business operations, we’ve
Implement a high-performance, products such as photos, photo books,
increased our number of retail partners
highly scalable storage infra- photo calendars, business cards, and
we work with from 2,000 to almost
structure that includes NetApp® stationery. PNI Digital Media success-
20,000 in just a few years. In the past
FAS6280, FAS3280, and fully generates millions of transactions
6 years, we’ve seen a 900% increase
FAS3170 storage systems. each year for retailers and their thou-
in transactions. This plus the massive
sands of locations worldwide.
increase in digital images uploaded by
Benefits
The Challenge consumers demanded a more robust
Providing ready access to millions and highly scalable storage
revenue-generating transac-
of digital photographs infrastructure.”
tions annually
The PNI Digital Media Platform provides
PNI needed an enterprise-class storage
even during holidays when transaction processing and order routing
infrastructure with centralized manage-
transactions can increase services for its retail clients. The on-
ment that provided easy provisioning
6 to 10 times demand ordering capabilities allow
and performance monitoring. The com-
consumers to easily place personal
pany also needed a flexible storage
NetApp Flash Cache photo product orders via the Web,
solution that met its diverse needs—
in-store kiosks, desktop software, and
from advanced performance to effec-
900% increase in transactions mobile phones. PNI stores petabytes
tive archival processes. The company
in the past 6 years of consumer data and generates
selected NetApp storage based on its
millions of transactions each year

2. “With consumers uploading multiple versions of
each digital image to the PNI Digital Media Platform,
we’re up to 950 million images and 3PB of data
stored on NetApp, and our big data storage
requirements continue to grow. NetApp offers us
the high performance we need in our data-intensive
environment and the ability to scale our storage
infrastructure as our business expands.”
Zack Wickes
Vice President, Technology, PNI Digital Media
ability to deliver rapid I/O processing, Customers can choose to have their NetApp helps PNI optimize its IT infra-
especially during the holidays and other personal photo products delivered to structure with multiprotocol support
peak ordering periods. the retail store providing the service or that provides the flexibility to leverage
to a residential or business address. the connectivity that best meets the
Just as important, PNI chose NetApp needs of the workload and the available
for the technology partnership it would PNI leverages NetApp Virtual Storage budgets. NetApp supports the easy
gain as a result. “We wanted more than Tier implemented with Flash Cache management and failover inherent in
a storage vendor,” Wickes emphasized. intelligent caching on the FAS6280
“NetApp understands how dependent storage system to boost the processing for its high-bandwidth workloads,
our business is on storage, particularly performance of its 1.5 billion files. as well as CIFS for PNI’s Windows®
the continuous uptime of the storage Using SATA drives with Flash Cache file servers.
platform. NetApp worked closely with for its critical workloads, the company
us to help ensure the storage infrastruc- reduces storage costs and latency for Business Benefits
ture met our demanding performance accelerated access to photo imagery Driving high-transaction
requirements and allowed us to meet by consumers and fulfillment labs. processing and revenue
our big data needs for our clients and Centralized storage management and The company’s business model involves
their customers.” performance monitoring help the IT earning revenue per transaction, which
staff optimize the NetApp storage comprises 76% of its overall revenue.
The Solution environment.
Accelerated processing for her digital images stored on the PNI
data-intensive workloads “We have massive metadata to cache Digital Media Platform and orders photo
PNI relies on NetApp FAS6280, and manage on our NetApp storage products through a retailer, PNI profits.
FAS3280, and FAS3170 storage systems,” says Wickes. “With consum-
systems and the Data ONTAP ® 8 ers uploading multiple versions of each PNI depends on advanced NetApp
operating system to host rich media digital image to the PNI Digital Media system performance and uptime to
data at production data centers in Platform, we’re up to 950 million support its business model and deliver
Vancouver, British Columbia, and images and 3PB of data stored on superior customer service. With
Toronto, Ontario. NetApp helps the NetApp, and our big data storage 24 cores and 192GB of memory, the
company support almost 20,000 retail requirements continue to grow. NetApp high-performance FAS6280 system
locations in the United States, Canada, offers us the high performance we need takes full advantage of the 64-bit
and the United Kingdom and to provide in our data-intensive environment and Data ONTAP 8 operating system.
on-demand access to nearly 1 billion the ability to scale our storage infra-
digital images through online fulfillment structure as our business expands.”
partners and in-store retail kiosks.

3. NetApp FAS3280 NetApp FAS3280 NetApp FAS3280
Microsoft Windows Servers
CIFS
10GbE
NetApp Flash Cache
SATA Drives
NetApp FAS6280
Running on
NetApp Data ONTAP 8 Virtual Storage Tier NetApp FAS3170
Figure 1) PNI Digital Media production environment.
PNI Digital Media relies on NetApp FAS6280, 3280, and 3170 storage systems and NetApp Virtual Storage Tier to support its big data growth path,
scaling to over 4PB.
A substantial percentage of PNI’s rev- Beyond the busy holiday season, “We’re a high-I/O business, unlike other
enue is generated during the holidays, NetApp helps drive more than 18 million companies that need storage strictly
when transaction processing increases fast, revenue-generating transactions for archival purposes,” notes Wickes.
significantly. Although about 4 million annually. “If our system is slow, con- “We’ve experienced a 900% increase
users access the PNI Digital Media sumers will either order less or they’ll in transactions in the past 6 years and
Platform in September, approximately simply use another retailer supported continuous growth in the amount of
12 million access it in December. One by another company’s digital media digital images uploaded by consumers
out of every four holiday photo cards platform,” emphasizes Wickes. “It’s to our data center. Yet we also have
ordered in the United States is ordered that simple. Downtime costs us dearly enormous capacity requirements given
via the PNI Digital Media Platform. in lost revenue, and it also impacts our petabytes of digital imagery data.
PNI capitalizes on holiday volume and the bottom line of our retail partners, NetApp meets our intensive performance
the reliability of NetApp storage perfor- so we just can’t have it.” requirements and also offers the scal-
mance during peak transaction times. ability and simplified provisioning we
Growing data and a growing
partnership need as well as an easy upgrade path
“On a peak day during our last holiday to accommodate growth.”
season, we transferred approximately With a steep growth trajectory, PNI
100 million digital images for consum- went on the offensive to ensure that Growth will include expanded services
ers ordering 16 million greeting cards, it had the infrastructure in place to in the near future. The company is cur-
25,000 photo books, and 40,000 photo support its growth path. Although all rently investing resources to develop
calendars,” says Wickes. “NetApp companies must accommodate data two new platforms: an on-demand
FAS6280 storage system performance growth, PNI especially depends on printing solution for small businesses
and uptime are key to our ability to storage scalability and flexibility given and a social-stationery solution.
handle big bandwidth requirements the sheer magnitude of data growth
during peak times. NetApp has helped in recent years and projections for the Wickes explains how NetApp’s partner-
us maintain 100% uptime while manag- coming years. The FAS6280 storage ship with PNI is fundamental to meeting
ing a 6 to 10 times increase in photo system supports PNI’s big data growth its dynamic business requirements.
order transactions through recent path, scaling to over 4PB. “NetApp understands our business and
holiday seasons.”

4. “NetApp FAS6280 storage system performance
and uptime are key to our ability to handle big
bandwidth requirements during peak times.
NetApp has helped us maintain 100% uptime
while managing up to a 6 to 10 times increase
in photo order transactions through recent
holiday seasons.”
Zack Wickes
Vice President, Technology, PNI Digital Media
understands our pain points, which
SOLUTION COMPONENTS
helps ensure we have the right storage
solution for our complex transactional NetApp Products Protocols
environment,” he says. “In addition, FAS6280 storage system CIFS
we don’t have to explain our business
FAS3280 storage systems
every time we call NetApp Professional
Services. We’ve received the same FAS3170 storage system Third-Party Products
personalized support from the same Data ONTAP 8 operating system Microsoft® SharePoint® Server
individuals for years now, which is a Flash Cache
huge asset to our storage environment
and the ROI of our storage investment.
We expect our business to continue
to grow, and we expect NetApp to
grow with us.”
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