Safelite Leapfrogs Competitors, Boosts Care and Customer Base, Builds Hurricane-Ready Infrastructure with NetApp

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 23, 2018 -- NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP), empowering its customers to change the world with data, today celebrates Safelite, a data visionary and the largest auto glass specialist in the United States. A data-driven company, Safelite has transformed the delivery of immersive location-based experiences for customers, while safeguarding its data with NetApp^® technology. 

Based in Ohio, Safelite is the largest auto glass specialist in the United States, serving 6 million customers from more than 720 locations. Dedicated to turning stressful auto glass repair and replacement into unexpected moments of happiness, Safelite makes it easy to book repairs and track service technicians through phone, web, and mobile technologies.

Already grappling with how to manage 100x data growth from smart car technology and increasing product complexity, Safelite wasted no time replacing its aging infrastructure after facing performance challenges during the 2016 hurricane season. In need of an infrastructure that offered flexibility, scalability, and a singular OS, Safelite turned to NetApp to build a next-generation data center using FlexPod^® Datacenter with the NetApp SolidFire^® storage operating system. 

“As our ability to deliver exceptional, uninterrupted customer service is inexorably linked to data, we needed a hurricane-proof infrastructure that would enable us to accelerate the response and delivery of our data-rich customer experiences,” said Matthew Coy, vice president of Information Technology, Safelite. “Working with NetApp, we were able to weather one of the worst hurricane seasons on record this year, managing the influx of calls while competitors weren’t—we even took on more customers.”

With its new infrastructure in place, Safelite has achieved its best application response times in history. Data deduplication has increased efficiency, which enables Safelite to maximize its storage space and reduce its data footprint. In addition, the new infrastructure has decreased platform operating costs, while Cisco UCS has eased administration. Using NetApp SnapMirror^® replication technology and archiving NetApp Snapshot^™ copies to other parts of the data center, Safelite can now make sure that everything is disk based or cloud based. And, because call recordings are all software as a service (SaaS) with 30% of application workloads in some combination of Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), Safelite can now push more of its infrastructure to the cloud with NetApp technology. Looking to the future, Safelite is well positioned to continue to innovate, create new revenue streams, optimize operations, and actively seek out new customer touchpoints.

About NetApp 
NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. We provide a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with our partners, we empower global organizations to unleash the full potential of their data to expand customer touchpoints, foster greater innovation, and optimize their operations. For more information, visit www.netapp.com. #DataDriven

Press Contact: 
Madge Miller
NetApp 
1 408 419 5263
[email protected]

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