Egypt's leading manufacturer of commercial vehicles MCV (Manufacturing Commercial Vehicles), has announced that STME, an enterprise storage leader, has successfully implemented for it a core enterprise storage infrastructure solution.

MCV has a licence from Daimler Chrysler to make the vehicles. A statement from the Egyptian firm said all of its company information, including the financial and sales data generated by its ERP system, was protected by the new solution.

MCV's five branches will now be able to access information from the central computing system at head office via a satellite hook-up. Previously, it relied on manual backups for its vital corporate data, which resulted in errors and generated a greater workload for employees.

All MCV buses and trucks are manufactured at its Salheya facility, which has an installed capacity of 9,000 vehicles annually.

The entire production process is controlled through a SAP ERP system. MCV has become the local market leader in the manufacture of Mercedes Benz commercial vehicles and exports 40 per cent of its annual production.

"Our rapid expansion has necessitated more disk capacity," said Alfred Fouad, IT manager at MCV, "but we preferred to have a centralised storage solution that could provide extra storage capacity, and schedule and run accurate backups, as well as offer data protection and accessibility to each of the five branches of the company."

He added: "STME's expertise in enterprise storage and excellent pre-sales, and post-sales, service impressed us, while the proposed comprehensive and cost-effective solution perfectly meets our storage needs."

For the new MCV storage solution hardware was provided by EMC, a global technology partner of STME. The centralised storage system implemented by MCV includes EMC CLARiiON hardware, Veritas Netbackup software and an Exabyte automated tape library.

Already, 100 MCV users are accessing data from the EMC CLARiiON, a figure that is expected to rise by 50 per cent in the next phase of the project.

STME was selected following an extremely competitive bidding process.

"With this new storage strategy, MCV can expect not only greater efficiency, but also a smooth transition into new areas of business," commented Andrew Calthorpe, STME sales director.