SCIENCE

HOPKINTON, MA -- The Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, has upgraded its EMC information storage infrastructure with new networked storage systems and information management software to absorb huge volumes of new business-critical data and lower the operational cost of managing its growing sophisticated information network. "Growing initiatives such as e-business and data warehousing created a colossal need for intelligent, robust and functional storage solutions," said Tom Larson, Home Depot's Director of Technical Services. "EMC stepped in with powerful, reliable, and scalable storage systems to house this ever-increasing data and delivered an extensive suite of software to extract more business value and return on investment from Home Depot's information infrastructure." "EMC invests more in storage software than any other vendor, and frankly, it shows," continued Larson. "With EMC software, we now move around and re-use storage on the fly to ensure our storage utilization levels consistently hit 90% or more. EMC software has allowed us to chip away at sources of downtime as part of our ongoing commitment to make information more available to our users." Home Depot, based in Atlanta, has more than doubled the capacity of its existing EMC information storage infrastructure and has begun to implement over 50 copies of EMC information storage and management software - including HighRoad, ESN Manager, PowerPath, TimeFinder, ControlCenter and Symmterix Optimizer -- to support its online and offline growth. Larson commented, "We expanded our online catalogs to feature 20,000 products supported by thousands of new info-rich images and associated data. We're pumping our data warehouse with new information to more closely track buying trends - which helps our store managers and vendors with more precise replenishment and inventory management. The net result is information storage growth outpacing what we're experiencing with our servers." Home Depot has consolidated the information fueling its business-critical applications including retail store systems, accounts payable, human resources, payroll, e-business, intranet and data warehousing on EMC storage. EMC's multi-year commitment to open and heterogeneous information storage has enabled Home Depot to centralize the storage resources for its range of operating systems and servers - such as Windows NT, Unix, IBM RS/6000 AIX, Novell, and IBM MVS and Hewlett-Packard - onto a single, easy to manage platform. Home Depot's EMC information infrastructure includes EMC's Celerra File Server, a network-attached storage (NAS) solution, and EMC's Celerra HighRoad software, which integrates the benefits of NAS and SAN into one seamless architecture. The company plans to use Celerra and HighRoad to deploy a "write once, publish everywhere" strategy to train its vast employee base. "The possibilities for EMC's Celerra and Celerra HighRoad are endless," said Larson. "Celerra soon will house Intranet images of products and training videos for hundreds of thousands of Home Depot employees. Today, we need to send updates to 1,200 stores every time we change this information. By making Celerra our central repository, it will be a breeze to update our information only one time and dramatically lower our data management costs." David Donatelli, EMC's Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing and New Business Development, said, "Innovative and cost-effective use of information has been a long-standing ingredient in the Home Depot success story. Other technology-smart companies are following suit as they recognize superior information management is synonymous with top-notch customer service, lower costs, and better products. EMC is the only vendor that offers the full array of tools and strategies businesses need to unlock the full value of their information assets." For more information visit www.emc.com