Case Study: Washtenaw County saves taxpayers millions with Dell EMC data-center consolidation and migration services

Washtenaw County - Customer Case Study

Washtenaw County, Michigan — whose IT organization supports more than 30 departments and hundreds of applications — faced an aging, flood-prone basement data center with constrained power and no room for growth, putting critical financial and public-service systems at risk. With relocation estimates between $1.6M and $3M and a concurrent opportunity to share resources with the City of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County engaged Dell EMC (EMC Consulting) to plan and execute a safe, cost‑effective migration.

Dell EMC used Ionix Application Discovery Manager to map application interdependencies, recommended installing a new Celerra NS‑480 SAN with Cisco SAN switches and replicating data (rather than physically moving CLARiiON), and produced detailed runbooks to manage a two‑weekend migration of ~120 servers and 300 applications. Dell EMC completed the move on schedule with no unplanned downtime, enabled shared infrastructure and disaster‑recovery planning, and delivered about $2.5 million in taxpayer savings while creating ongoing consolidation and collaboration opportunities.

Washtenaw County

Dale Vanderford

Director of Technology