Shoppers Stop Implements Iomega NAS Solutions for New Tapeless Retail Environment

Iomega, an EMC company and provider of network storage to small and medium business, today announced that India's premier lifestyle and fashion destination Shoppers Stop, has successfully completed the implementation of Iomega's 2TB StorCenter ix2-200 network-attached storage (NAS) device across all Shoppers Stop stores in India. The new solution is helping Shoppers Stop create a virtual and tape free storage environment leading to enhanced efficiency of the IT support team. “Before implementing the Iomega solution, we were taking back up of store data in tapes which was slow in nature. We were facing challenges in maintaining the huge inventory of tapes which kept increasing every year. Iomega's NAS solution helped us to simplify and streamline the data backup process at our stores. It has made our life much easier by eliminating the non-productive manual tasks of storing and keeping inventory of the tapes at each store or consolidating at a central location. Most of all, it has enabled us to get rid of the ever increasing inventory of tapes,” said Mr. Gopakumar Panicker, Sr. Manager, Solutions & Technology Team, Shoppers Stop.

The Iomega desktop NAS architecture across 41 Shoppers Stop group stores, and the additional 9 HyperCITY stores, will deliver 50 terra bytes of mirrored storage space from 100 TB of physical storage and will enable Shoppers Stop to do the following: 1) Central management and monitoring through IP based storage device; Active directory integration for centralized access control, management and single sign-on: Since majority of the company's infrastructure and applications are integrated with Directory Services, the solution will help reduce complexity in managing multiple user accounts and passwords. Active Directory integration will further help Shoppers Stop to secure the data and meet the company's password and security policies without any manual efforts. 2)Ability to browse the data from a central location: The administrators and application team will have access to store backup data from a central location, they can view multiple versions and restore the data without searching for tapes. 3)Multiple servers sharing the backup device: A backup device can be shared across multiple servers or stores in the same location. 4)Faster backups compared to Tape: reduction in back up time leading to enhanced efficiency of the support teams. 5)Faster recovery in case of a server crash.

“The solution helped us to improve resilience while eliminating non-productive tasks such as tape / inventory management and hence the team now focuses on more important aspects. The device has been standardized for all the existing stores and new stores. We are now looking at deploying the solution in other business units such as Crossword Book Stores and hope to accomplish this in the next few months”, added Mr. Arun Gupta, Customer Care Associate & Group CTO, Shoppers Stop. Mr. Praveen Sahai, Director of Sales - India & SAARC, Iomega, said “We are happy to be associated with the Shoppers Stop, which is among the most respected companies in the retail sector. We are committed to help Shoppers Stop become more efficient and productive by eliminating unreliable tape from their environment. Iomega's NAS solution is a perfect fit for retail chains and can significantly increase IT performance in such an environment by reducing manual tasks.”