Slovak Telekom – efficient data management as the foundation of IT service performance and quality

Context

Slovak Telekom is among the leaders of the telecommunications market in Slovakia and is part of the international Deutsche Telekom group. The company provides services to millions of customers and operates an extensive IT environment supporting key business processes.

Growing data volumes and application performance requirements create the need for efficient, scalable, and secure data management, which forms the basis for reliable service operation.

Collaboration

PosAm carried out a project to consolidate and modernize the data environment, aiming to increase data management efficiency, reduce costs, and improve IT system performance.

Challenge

The original environment consisted of:

33 disk arrays
more than 1.1 PB of data capacity
heterogeneous technologies from various manufacturers (HP, IBM, EMC, NetApp)
infrastructure spread across 4 geographically separated data centers

This setup was unsustainable in the long term in terms of:

management efficiency
costs
application performance
and data consistency

Solution

A key decision in the project was whether to continue optimizing the existing environment or carry out a fundamental modernization. Based on an economic analysis using Storage Economics from Hitachi Data Systems, the customer decided to invest in consolidation and modernization, which demonstrated lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and a clear return on investment.

The modernization covered 29 of the original 33 systems, and the solution was built on a new architecture based on four Hitachi Data Systems disk arrays, deployed in the primary and backup data centers at geographically separated locations.

The solution uses advanced technologies for efficient data management:

Storage virtualization enabling capacity consolidation and more efficient utilization
Dynamic Tiering, which automatically moves data between performance tiers based on activity
Dynamic Provisioning, ensuring “just-in-time” capacity allocation and minimizing unused space
advanced mechanisms for local and remote data replication and protection

The solution architecture was designed with an emphasis on high availability, performance, and data security, including guaranteed protection at the technology level used.

The project was implemented gradually in four stages, with system migration carried out during full operation without any impact on the availability of critical applications. The implementation also included data reorganization and classification aimed at optimizing data placement and eliminating duplicates.

Value and key benefits of the solution

Reduced costs for operating, managing, and supporting the IT environment
Increased performance and responsiveness of business applications
Simplification and consolidation of a complex data environment
Higher data security and compliance with Deutsche Telekom group standards
More efficient capacity utilization and better data management

The modernization of the data environment brought measurable improvements:

36% savings in disk space thanks to more efficient capacity utilization
return on investment (ROI) within 4 years
significant reduction in IT operating and management costs
significant increase in application performance and responsiveness
unification and consolidation of the data environment
improved data security and compliance

Result

Slovak Telekom gained a consolidated, high-performance, and efficient data environment capable of reliably supporting its key business applications and further data volume growth.

The modernization brought not only cost optimization and increased performance, but also higher data quality and better conditions for managing the IT environment.

The project confirms PosAm’s ability to carry out complex transformation initiatives in the field of data management and deliver solutions that have a direct impact on the efficiency and quality of IT services for large corporate customers.