Gerber Scientific employs 2,200 people worldwide and generates annual revenues of around US $640 million. The global organization is supported by an IT infrastructure built around SAP ERP 5.0, which handles financial accounting and controlling, and sales and distribution processes.

Gerber Scientific runs SAP on IBM Power Architecture, and its aging storage area network (SAN) systems, based on an aging proprietary storage device from another vendor, needed to be replaced as it was causing performance bottlenecks and was running out of capacity.

Gerber Scientific sought a new storage solution that would resolve its existing performance and space problems, as well as support future expansion. To deliver adequate performance for the existing SAP environment, the new infrastructure needed to be capable of supporting at least 10,000 inputs/outputs per second (IOPS), as well as multiple instances of the Oracle database.

To archive these goals, Gerber Scientific chose the IBM XIV Storage System for their SAP environment.