05 February 2017

Founded in 1943, Penlon makes and distributes medical devices for anesthesia, intubation, oxygen therapy and suction. From its base in Abingdon, it has a presence in more than 90 countries.

Penlon needed its IT systems to deliver on two main objectives: simplified management and business continuity.

Having previously moved to virtualisation in order to save time and to create a more streamlined and enhanced IT environment, the firm wanted to simplify the management and complexity of its infrastructure whilst guaranteeing business continuity for its customers.

Penlon’s IT manager, Tony Serratore, says: “The systems were vastly difficult to manage and when it came to updates we had to ensure everything was in sync. If the system seemed to be working we would not even think about installing upgrades as it was too complex and came with risks. But this wasn’t a long-term solution.”

The company’s choice was to either stay with its current system running the risk of downtime, or look for a new solution that was simple, cost effective and easy to use. “We wanted a solution which would work with us and support our growing business, offering the flexibility and agility we needed,” says Serratore.

After reviewing the market, Penlon selected NAS UK, based a short distance away in Wallingford, which suggested Scale Computing. After trialling the vendor’s HC3 cluster, it opted for its HC 4000 and HC 1000 cluster.

Serratore says the company can now add capacity as and when needed: “We don’t need to over provision and can simply expand our environment when needed.”

As well as ease of use, Penlon also wanted less management time. Serratore says the firm’s RPO and RTO have now been dramatically reduced from three days to a matter of minutes. “We can now use this time to focus on other IT priorities making a real difference to the business. We have effectively been able to build a data centre in a server room, without cloud-based services. The technology provides servers, storage and virtualisation in one solution with complete transparency.”