Case Study: Savanna Energy Services Corp achieves 32X faster payroll processing with SanDisk's Fusion ioMemory

Sandisk And Savanna Energy Services Flying High In Canada

Savanna Energy Services, a Calgary‑based oilfield services provider with roughly 457 field employees, was hampered by a severe I/O bottleneck on its SQL Server 2008 system: weekly payroll processing took 8–10 hours and made the server inaccessible, forcing payroll into multiple batches and preventing employees from using the system during runs. The team needed a way to dramatically cut batch times, let staff continue working while payroll ran, and scale for growth.

Savanna moved its production database onto a SanDisk Fusion ioMemory (ioDrive) card after a quick proof‑of‑concept. A typical two‑hour payroll batch fell to 10 minutes and the full payroll job dropped from 8 hours to 15 minutes (a 32× improvement), consolidating four jobs into one. The upgrade freed system access during payroll, recovered up to 52 days of productivity for 10 employees, left ~80% performance headroom for growth, and deferred a SAN upgrade.

Savanna Energy Services Corp

Jim Clarke

Manager, Global Infrastructure