THE CHALLENGE
A leader in the development of analytics and hardware for high-end storage installations had to re-write software every 1.5 years because of hardware with short product lifecycles. They needed a partner to design appliance hardware and develop a systems architecture to support a five year software operational life despite component lifecycles of 1.5 years or less.
WHY SANMINA
Sanmina demonstrated expertise in four key areas: access to designers and advanced technology roadmaps for tier one component manufacturers; design experience in combining custom high-performance hardware designs with off the shelf technology; experience with systems integration on a vast scale for some of the world’s best known computing and storage companies; quality management systems and a global footprint to enable rapid expansion and scale.
SANMINA’S APPROACH
A Sanmina hardware development team was deployed with expertise in key areas including commercial off the shelf technology, high-performance systems architecture, custom optical design, large scale systems integration and logistics.
Manage Advanced Technology Roadmaps
Sanmina’s purchasing scale and relationships with designers of advanced components like processors, FPGAs and network adapters provided access to advanced technology roadmaps. Components with longer product lifecycles were selected. Engineers at Sanmina developed a strategy for interfacing software and hardware which maximized the operational lifetime of the customer’s software and enabled it to rapidly incorporate new hardware as it was released.
Collaboration Optimizes Performance
Sanmina’s design team worked closely with the customer software development team to develop a robust, customized hardware configuration that optimized application performance.
Custom Design for Network Monitors
The existing single network monitor port needed to be re-designed to increase capacity and speed. An off the shelf solution was not available. Sanmina designed a network monitoring port PCBA based on optical technology which reduced the cost and size by a factor of eight.
Logistics & Time to Market
Sanmina developed system prototypes in close proximity to the customer. This enabled rapid engineering changes and close collaboration on technical challenges. The system was introduced and launched with a manufacturing strategy ready to scale on a world-wide basis.
RESULTS
- Sanmina’s new hardware architecture and design resulted in a 3X improvement in software life, to 5 years.
- 8X improvement in the cost and size of the network monitor ports.
