Sacramento County Reduces Costs by 50% with NetApp

State and Local Governments Turn to NetApp to Drive Down Costs and Drive Up Service Levels

Sunnyvale, Calif.— —Sacramento County, home to nearly 1.4 million residents and the state’s capital, is a recognized leader in leveraging information technology to deliver citizen services. The Sacramento County Office of Communications & Information Technology (OCIT) is the centralized IT and telecommunications service provider, enabling county workers to access the information and data they need to respond quickly and effectively to resident requests. But, like other counties throughout the state, Sacramento County is faced with budget constraints that put an increased focus on maximizing existing resources. To enhance its ability to deliver these services, OCIT built its infrastructure on a NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP) foundation, increasing overall IT efficiency and flexibility while dramatically lowering costs.

OCIT’s previous storage environment was made up of disparate systems, which created numerous inefficiencies, limited its ability to quickly back up data, and redirected resources away from strategic IT projects. Furthermore, OCIT needed a cost-effective way to back up its virtualized servers and quickly restore them in the event of a server failure. To address these challenges and free up resources and money to invest in other innovative services, OCIT worked with NetApp reseller Applied Computer Solutions (ACS) to transition to a NetApp unified storage infrastructure.

News Highlights

*NetApp’s deduplication and thin-provisioning technologies helped OCIT immediately increase overall storage efficiency by reducing storage space requirements within its Microsoft® Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server® applications by up to 80%.
*NetApp solutions for virtual environments have helped OCIT reduce server operational expenses by 50%. For example, NetApp SnapMirror® has eliminated the need to find budget for additional storage while NetApp SnapManager® for Virtual Infrastructure enables OCIT to restore virtual machines in 10 minutes rather than the several hours it used to take, freeing up resources to focus on other innovative projects.
*To comply with requests through the Public Records Act, OCIT is often required to produce employee e-mail from previous months. This would normally take up to 24 hours to retrieve but now can be done in just 2 hours, thanks to NetApp SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange, which integrates tightly with Microsoft technology to streamline storage management and optimize performance.
*Additionally, SnapManager for Microsoft Exchange enables OCIT to perform e-mail backups every 2 hours throughout the day, reducing the time it takes to recover an inbox or single e-mail from 6 hours to less than 10 minutes. With SnapManager software, OCIT is also able to back up its enterprise content management application, which stores vital county records, such as birth certificates, in seconds rather than the 48 to 72 hours it used to take. The increased efficiencies have led to improved workforce productivity and responsiveness. The 1.5 full-time OCIT employees previously dedicated to monitoring backups can now focus on other business-critical functions.

Supporting Quotes

*David Villanueva, Interim Chief Information Officer for the Sacramento County Office of Communications & Information Technology
“By making it faster to retrieve vital citizen and government records, NetApp storage is markedly improving the efficiency of OCIT. It has also allowed valuable staff to turn their efforts to other important and strategic projects, ultimately enhancing their productivity while still lowering county costs.”
*Regina Kunkle, Vice President of State and Local Government and Higher Education (SLED), NetApp
“NetApp is focused on working with our state and local government customers to provide them with the storage solutions they need to thrive in today’s demanding IT environment. OCIT is a great example of how the right storage platform can provide the necessary IT efficiency and flexibility to enable counties to deliver the services its citizens require while reducing overall costs and expenditures.”


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