Tata Sky Selects IBM Hybrid Storage to Serve 30 million TV Customers

ARMONK, N.Y. - 14 Oct 2015: Tata Sky, a leading broadcast satellite television provider in India, has selected a new IBM (NYSE: IBM) hybrid storage system to help it better serve its 30 million customers.

“As the fastest growing, direct-to-home, digital television satellite service provider in India, Tata Sky simply cannot operate without mission-critical storage that provides the utmost business continuity and operational efficiency in both our primary and disaster recovery sites,” said N. Ravishanker, CIO of Tata Sky. The technology deployed at Tata Sky relies on mitigating risk of data loss and at the same time, accessing data swiftly. “With IBM DS8000 hybrid flash storage, our response time has significantly improved and queries now return in less than one second, bringing higher efficiencies."

The company is using IBM DS8000 systems as its primary storage for all critical workloads, including CRM, billing and disaster recovery.

Constant uptime and the risk of data loss is always at the forefront of data-driven enterprises, like Tata Sky, as well as banking, financial and healthcare operations. By 2020, 15 percent of digital businesses will fail due to inadequate protection against downtime.^[1]

Security is also essential for both customer trust and business operations.The cost of a single data breach can spiral to $3.8 million, up 23 percent since 2013.[2] The DS8000 family meets these challenges by significantly improving the management of growing storage demands required by the realities of today’s digital businesses.

To accelerate business critical computing, IBM announced a new IBM DS8880 of enterprise hybrid storage, a powerful, next generation system designed with real-time data insights for clients requiring increased performance, data protection and uncompromised, nonstop availability.

With the DS8880 mission-critical applications are accelerated -- up to two times faster[3] than previous generations, making it an ideal storage option for banking and financial industries, for use with electronic medical records, as well as for ERP, CRM and retail systems that need reliable, agile and constant access to data.

The latest architecture also mitigates risk since all components are redundant and can be upgraded online. This minimizes downtime to approximately 30 seconds per year -- even less if a multi-site disaster recovery solution is also installed.^[4]

With a large-scale disaster, business continuance is just as important as data protection and the DS8880 allows remote mirroring that can be integrated with a high availability server capability to provide the highest levels of availability.

For those customers like Tata Sky, that are looking for integration with cloud-based and mission critical environments, the DS8880 family offers powerful integration with IBM z Systems and other IBM compute platforms to improve business processes and services by enabling systems for the dynamic demands of analytics, big data and cloud environments. It maximizes utilization of resources, including staff productivity, space and cost with streamlined management and operations and 30 percent reduction in footprint[5] on a new 19-inch rack.

“In today’s fast, analytics data-driven, cloud-based world, our clients need storage options that they can rely on and that directly impact their ability to deliver high quality service to their customers and outperform competitors,” said Jamie Thomas, General Manager, IBM Storage. “As part of IBM’s bold commitment to storage, today’s launch of the DS8880 family offers an ideal solution for clients like Tata Sky that require high performing, mission critical acceleration to manage the changing conditions in the modern enterprise.”

The new DS8880 family of storage incorporates a high performance flash enclosure module providing optimized performance for mission critical applications. Additionally, the system can scale three petabytes[6], offering advanced features for compliance and security. The DS8880 graphical user interface (GUI) also includes intuitive navigation and streamlined configuration processes, providing, customizable views, interactive menus and a configuration wizard to help administrators configure an entire solution in less than 30 minutes. [7]

The new family of storage is available worldwide beginning today with a starting price of $50,000 and with new licensing packages for simplified ordering and installation. Models include:

• IBM DS8884 - a lower cost, space-saving system with advanced, easy-to-use operations and continuous availability for running critical workloads on IBM z Systems, IBM Power Systems or distributed systems, as a dedicated platform for consolidated systems or for multiple platforms.
• IBM DS8886 – an enterprise class system that accelerates critical applications with up to two times[8] better performance backed by more than six nines availability, multi-site replication; and IBM z Systems, IBM Power Systems or distributed systems integration -- in an easily scalable package.
• IBM DS8888 – an all-flash Storage system, with availability in early 2016, designed for extreme acceleration of mission critical applications, with nonstop availability and simplified integration.