• Improved performance and scalability allow Masternaut, Europe's leading telematics provider, to deliver best in class business intelligence to customers more quickly
  • With the latest Dell Storage software upgrade, Masternaut has doubled the number of vehicles it can manage on one storage platform
  • Reduced storage costs 35 percent compared to legacy storage system


Masternaut, Europe's largest telematics provider, has introduced Dell Storage to its IT infrastructure to improve performance, reduce costs and support future expansion.

"In terms of online storage, the new infrastructure has enabled Masternaut to ensure resilience and operational efficiency," said Alex Rothwell, CTO for Masternaut "Since upgrading the software to Dell Compellent Storage Center 6.3, we have seen an immediate reduction in latency, allowing us to extend the platform capacity by increasing the number of input/output operations per second which more than doubles our storage performance."

The ability to carry out software upgrades quickly, and with no additional costs or interruption to its services, means that Masternaut has been able to double the amount of vehicles that it is able to manage on each storage platform without needing to make an additional financial investment. Moving forward, Dell's flexible scale out design means that if the company requires more storage capacity it simply has to add more spindles.

Masternaut tracks and monitors drivers, vehicles and mobile assets across Europe, processing, analysing and storing around 150 million data transactions every day. The real-time information captured by these transactions covers everything from vehicle movements and whereabouts, alarm activations and driver performance. Insights gleaned from this intelligence enables Masternaut's customers to reduce the cost of running fleets by better managing fuel consumption, fleet coordination and responsible driving, leading to reduced fuel costs, improved efficiency and lower insurance premiums.

"Providing real time information is a core part of our business, so having an IT infrastructure which can support this is vital," adds Rothewell. "There is a correlation between the performance of our storage infrastructure and the customer experience; as we process such a high volume of real time data each day, it is essential that every area of our infrastructure - especially our storage environment - is able to operate quickly and with extremely low latency."

Masternaut carried out a major hardware upgrade and as part of that process invested in a single Dell Compellent SC40 array which ran 200 disks and supported 50 terabytes of data. After a year, Masternaut extended this infrastructure with three additional Dell Compellent SC8000 Controllers, each with 200 drives. Two of the arrays are located in France and the other two in the UK and collectively, this environment could support 350 terabytes of data. The expansion of Masternaut's Dell storage infrastructure was completed in six hours with zero downtime and without the need to shut down the application platform.

Quotes:
" We are constantly working to improve the quality of service that we deliver to our customers and working with Dell Storage has both supported our immediate need for high performance and resilience and our longer term goal for a cost effective and scalable architecture, which can grow alongside our business," said Martin Hiscox, Chairman and CEO , Masternaut.

"At Dell, we understand that in today's economic climate, keeping an eye on costs is more vital than ever for businesses and their customers," said Aisling Keegan, general manager and executive director, Preferred Accounts, Dell UK. "Dell Storage offers businesses the ability to enhance their scalability and performance, as well as carry out software updates at no additional cost. This allows them to easily expand their storage architecture without the need to 'rip and replace' their existing infrastructure. Masternaut is a prime example of how Dell can significantly improve the performance of a company's supporting storage infrastructure; helping them take their product to market quicker and grow the business more effectively." -

About Masternaut
Masternaut is Europe's largest provider of telematics solutions. Founded in 1996, the company now employs over 600 telematics specialists and has more than 10,000 customers.

Masternaut provides a SaaS-based Mobile Resource Management (MRM) application suite for businesses of all sizes to help them achieve greater operational efficiencies through a lowering of vehicle fuel consumption, effective tracking of assets, productivity increases in workforce, reduced vehicle wear and tear, improved management of driver behaviour, and a reduction in CO2 emissions. These solutions drive tangible savings and service improvements for customers across all parts of an organisation; from finance to HR, operations to customer service.

Our suite modules range from driver performance management, fleet and consumer insurance, traditional vehicle tracking and specialist services for the transport and logistics industry, including remote digital tachograph download and temperature monitoring. Masternaut also provides highly-configurable solutions to the public sector for highways maintenance and infrastructure support.

Masternaut has the largest telematics R&D team in Europe, continuously innovating to deliver the most reliable and scalable platform available. The company has over 300,000 assets, vehicles and people connected to its SaaS solutions. Over 15,000 users interact every hour with the systems, and over 50 million data transactions are processed and configured into 20,000 reports every day.

With customers in 32 countries, Masternaut has multiple offices and partners throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

Website: www.masternaut.com

For all press enquiries:
Emma Brown / Phil Szomszor
Firefly Communications
Tel:
masternautteam@fireflycomms.com

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.co.uk.

Dell Compellent is a trademark of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

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