Customer profile

Company: QuorumLabs

Industry: Technology

Country: United States

Employees: 35

Website: www.quorumlabs.com

Business needIn producing its business continuity appliance, QuorumLabs needed an OEM partner with a broad portfolio of robust hardware, scalable services, and strong support to minimize problems, support growth, and allow in-house staff to focus on software.

SolutionQuorumLabs works with Dell OEM Solutions to produce the QuorumLabs onQ™ business continuity appliance. The company created multiple models and capitalizes on Dell ProSupport to help minimize customer downtime.

“We gained a complete OEM solution with the right combination of OEM experience, reliable hardware, and strong, global support by selecting Dell OEM Solutions.”

Bill Culman, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, QuorumLabs

QuorumLabs produces a robust business continuity solution and reduces labor costs by one-third working with Dell OEM Solutions

Benefits

• Reduced hardware failures by using robust, reliable servers

• Minimized customer downtime with next-day, on-site support

• Decreased labor costs by one-third, sustaining margins and keeping pricing competitive

• Refocused in-house engineers on innovative software development

• Gained a scalable OEM model that can support 50 percent quarterly customer growth and expansion into new geographic regions

• Backup, recovery, and archiving• OEM

“The onQ appliance offers high availability and disaster recovery in a single solution,” explains Bill Culman, vice president of engineering and operations at QuorumLabs. “As data is backed up to disk, onQ creates a virtual machine image of each production server. If a server goes down, administrators activate the virtual machine copy of the server on the appliance to minimize user downtime. For disaster recovery, organizations can deploy a second appliance at a remote site. The local appliance automatically synchronizes updates with the remote appliance. If the primary site is disabled, the remote site can take over within minutes.”

When QuorumLabs began producing beta units of the onQ appliance, the company assembled hardware components in-house. But the internal team faced several challenges. “Our team did not have much experience building hardware products,” says Culman. “Whenever we wanted to make changes, we would have to research the compatibility of components and do thorough testing. These processes took time away from software development.”

In some cases, the components selected were unreliable. “We had difficulties with RAID controllers, and we discovered performance issues that resulted from poor integration of those controllers with the motherboard,” says Culman. “It was clear that we needed a more reliable hardware platform for the appliance.”

Support was also a problem. “If a hardware issue developed after deployment, our customers shipped the unit back to us for repair while we shipped them a replacement unit.

During the time the replacement was in transit, our customers were unprotected. And once they received the replacement, they had to go through the lengthy process of reconfiguring the appliance,” says Culman. “At the same time, shipping was costly for us, and the process required us to keep multiple replacement units ready. We needed to work with a hardware vendor that could provide fast support to customers, wherever they were located, so we could avoid the need to ship replacement appliances.”

Producing new business continuity appliances with Dell OEM Solutions

After considering several other hardware vendors, the QuorumLabs team decided to work with Dell OEM Solutions. “We gained a complete OEM solution

Business continuity is no less important for midsized companies than large enterprises. But all too often, midsized businesses are forced to make do with business continuity solutions that deliver insufficient recovery time and reliability. QuorumLabs is determined to change all that. The QuorumLabs onQ turnkey appliance is designed to provide midsized organizations with a robust, enterprise-level business continuity solution without excessive cost or complexity.

“Our customers can avoid significant downtime....Meanwhile, we avoid the costs of shipping replacement appliances, the need to stock replacement units in our inventory, and the time to repair hardware by working with Dell ProSupport.”

Bill Culman, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, QuorumLabs

Technology at work

Services

Dell ProSupport

Hardware

Dell™ PowerEdge™ R510 and R310 servers with the Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 and 3400 series

Software

Citrix® XenServer®

Linux® CentOS

Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2

QuorumLabs onQ™

with the right combination of OEM experience, reliable hardware, and strong, global support by selecting Dell OEM Solutions,” says Culman.

QuorumLabs uses Dell™ PowerEdge™ R510 and R310 servers for onQ appliances. Both server models are equipped with processors from the Intel Xeon processor 5600 and 3400 series. “We’re able to provide the processing performance and the large-scale memory capacity we need for our product’s use of heavy virtualization with the Intel Xeon processors,” says Culman.

The appliance runs the onQ software in a Linux® CentOS virtual machine in a Citrix® XenServer® environment. The onQ software then creates Microsoft® Windows Server® virtual machines to protect the customer’s data. If a production server fails, the company runs the Windows virtual machine copy until the production server is repaired or replaced.

Gaining the flexibility to build multiple appliance models

QuorumLabs offers multiple appliance models, each with different processor, memory, and storage configurations. Customers select the appropriate model based on their number of servers and the amount of data they need to store. “We wanted to allow customers to rightsize their appliances for their specific needs,” says Culman. “We are able to create

four distinct appliance models easily by drawing from the broad product portfolio and multiple configuration options available from Dell.”

Establishing an efficient OEM process with customer delivery in under two weeks

QuorumLabs has established an efficient process for fulfilling orders by working with Dell OEM Solutions. Once an order is received at QuorumLabs or through a reseller, the QuorumLabs team places an order for a server with Dell. When the server arrives, the QuorumLabs team installs the software, tests the installation, places branding stickers on the device, and ships it out to the customer or reseller.

“The entire process, from customer order to shipment, takes only 10 to 12 days,” says Culman. “We are fulfilling orders rapidly and avoiding the need to keep an excessive number of servers in inventory by working with Dell OEM.”

Improving reliability with robust Dell hardware

According to Culman, the QuorumLabs team has significantly reduced hardware issues since moving to the Dell platform. “Providing reliable hardware is critical when you are selling a business continuity and disaster recovery solution,” says Culman. “When we produced the early beta units, we simply did not have the experience and expertise required to deliver high-quality hardware. Today, we

can offer robust and reliable appliances with much lower failure rates and better performance than those initial beta units. If a disaster strikes, our customers can have the confidence that their businesses will survive.”

QuorumLabs conveys that hardware reliability through the Dell brand. “We are proud to tell our customers that our appliances are built on a Dell platform,” says Culman. “They know that the Dell name signifies high-quality hardware.”

“We are able to create four distinct appliance models easily by drawing from the broad product portfolio and multiple configuration options available from Dell.”

Bill Culman, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, QuorumLabs

Delivering rapid on-site support

If a hardware problem does develop, QuorumLabs and its customers can rely on Dell ProSupport to resolve issues rapidly. Customers call QuorumLabs first. If hardware support is required, the QuorumLabs team can use Dell Online Self Dispatch to order replacement parts or schedule installation rapidly. When necessary, Dell ProSupport provides next-business-day, on-site service. “We no longer have to ship appliances back and forth to customers when repairs are needed,” says Culman. “Our customers can avoid significant downtime and overall have a much better support experience. Meanwhile, we avoid the costs of shipping replacement appliances, the need to stock replacement units in our inventory, and the time to repair hardware by working with Dell ProSupport.”

Reducing labor costs by one-third and refocusing on innovation

QuorumLabs no longer needs to spend as much time and money on hardware-related tasks since teaming up with Dell OEM Solutions. “We estimate that we have reduced labor costs by one-third as a result of handing off hardware functions to Dell OEM,” says Culman. “Those savings help us sustain our margins and ensure competitive pricing in this very price-sensitive market.”

Without having to spend excessive time on the selection, integration, and testing

of hardware components, the company also can keep personnel focused on core competencies. “We never wanted to worry about hardware quality or performance,” says Culman. “Now we can concentrate on our value-add, which is producing innovative software.”

Supporting continued growth and preparing for the future

Working with Dell OEM Solutions gives QuorumLabs the scalability to support the company’s 50 percent quarter-over-quarter growth. “If we had continued to assemble hardware internally, or even if we had gone to a white-box vendor, we would have had great difficulty keeping up with growing customer demand,” says Culman. “Now we can seamlessly scale up production and distribution to accommodate continued growth by working with Dell OEM.”

The QuorumLabs team will likely tap Dell to provide additional OEM services in the future. “As our volumes increase, we could certainly envision transferring more responsibilities to Dell, such as installing software and shipping directly to customers,” says Culman. “We also know that we can rely on regulatory assistance and the Dell global support infrastructure as we expand geographically. We definitely have plans to build our business, and we intend to leverage the capabilities of the entire Dell OEM organization to succeed.”

July 2011. © 2011 Dell Inc. Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. Intel, the Intel logo, and Intel Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Microsoft, the Microsoft logo, and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. This case study is for informational purposes only. DELL MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. Reference number: 10009761

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