Paper Company Adopts NetApp

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced that Blue Ridge Paper has realized significant cost savings and database performance improvements by leveraging NetApp network and data management solutions to transform its data center infrastructure. With these improvements, Blue Ridge has successfully implemented a solid disaster recovery system with high reliability and low total cost of ownership with a combination of NetApp virtualization technologies, including Snapshot™, and iSCSI. In all, Blue Ridge has saved over $450,000 in the last three years with a reduction in hardware infrastructure and administration costs and established demonstrable Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Blue Ridge Paper, a paper, packaging, and form board manufacturer based in Canton, North Carolina, faced a growing concern over storage need and cost, while automated, around-the-clock manufacturing required better database reliability and availability than what the company’s system could provide. Tape backups meant that critical databases such as Oracle® could be unavailable for four or more hours during a restore process. The company’s direct-attached storage model for UNIX® and Windows® systems meant administration was complicated, sharing data between systems was difficult, and efficiently provisioning data was nearly impossible. Blue Ridge looked to NetApp to solve these issues and help improve its ability to compete in a price-sensitive market.

“Our CRM and manufacturing execution systems use Oracle Databases, so the strength of the Oracle and NetApp relationship is important,” said Jeff Trantham, IT director at Blue Ridge Paper. “NetApp also has the best support for iSCSI storage. Equally important in our decision to deploy NetApp is that the solutions give us the ability to manage storage for heterogeneous systems using a unified storage platform.”

Network Appliance Inc.