PETC Petco Animal Supplies

Better, Faster Access to Consumer Marketing Intelligence Drives Sales, Improves In-Stock Store Inventories for Nation's Second-Largest Pet Supplies Retailer HOPKINTON, Mass., July 18 /PRNewswire/ -- EMC Corporation, the world leader in information management and storage, today announced that PETCO Animal Supplies, Inc. (NASDAQ:PETC) has consolidated storage and management of business-critical information using EMC storage, software and services. By embracing an information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy, PETCO, the second-largest specialty pet supplies retailer in the U.S. with more than 800 stores, has achieved faster and easier access to data about consumer buying trends, increased profitability, and improved in-stock store inventories. Eric Rosenzweig, Vice President of Information Systems for PETCO, said, "In retail, information delivers huge value to every operation. Consolidating our information onto EMC storage has allowed us to access vital data across our enterprise more quickly and efficiently. By keeping closer tabs on consumer buying trends, we're able to identify opportunities by store, customer segment or type of channel -- whether it be online or our stores. For example, we use EMC Captiva FormWare(R) to capture and process the new account applications for the PALS (PETCO Animal Lovers Save) frequent shopper program. So, we've been able to more closely analyze buyer shopping history captured at the point-of-sale. Information from PALS and other applications has helped us generate more targeted promotions, drive more sales and help with our inventory in-stock positions in our stores. Improvements like these have helped make PETCO a more profitable and cost-efficient enterprise." To support its comprehensive, ILM strategy, PETCO stores a wealth of data on its 90-terabyte, multi-tiered EMC infrastructure, everything from sales, inventory and finance data to human resources information. For the most data-intensive, highest performing applications, an EMC Symmetrix(R) storage area network (SAN) supports enterprise-wide financial systems, human resource management, credit card processing in real time, Microsoft Exchange 2003 email for several thousand users, PETCO's merchandising and inventory systems, a very large cluster of SQL server databases that comprise the company's customer relationship management system, and other applications such as Oracle. PETCO also uses mid-tier EMC CLARiiON(R) storage system to store databases for a variety of other applications. An EMC Celerra(R) NS704G network-attached storage (NAS) gateway provides users with centralized access to files such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. According to Rosenzweig, PETCO's new high-powered Symmetrix DMX(TM) 3 storage system has contributed to system performance and information availability gains. "We collect inventory and sales data from our stores, process that information, and generate orders for our suppliers and distribution centers. The processing power of the EMC Symmetrix helps keep batch windows as short as possible and ensures our applications are available when our users need them." Rosenzweig added, "We need something that runs and runs fast, something that I don't have to worry about, and is easy to manage. EMC does just that." Based in San Diego, PETCO has deployed EMC ControlCenter(R) to support its ILM strategy and manage its Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Celerra and other heterogeneous storage. In the last 18 months, PETCO's overall storage capacity has grown by 45 percent, and yet the size of its storage administration staff -- one full-time equivalent - has remained constant. "Because EMC ControlCenter is so open and easy-to-use, we've achieved tremendous economies of scale by having centralized control over multiple tiers of storage -- EMC and non-EMC alike," said Rosenzweig. "In using one management method to collect SAN statistics on performance and relationships to back-end storage, we've saved significant amount of time in documenting storage results. In addition, we gain more accurate, up-to-date information on which to base decisions about changing or expanding our storage environment." "EMC ControlCenter made it easy to handle this rapid growth in a more controlled manner," said Rosenzweig. "Without it, documentation, reporting and monitoring would have definitely gotten out of hand. It's also very easy to scale. We can add a new storage subsystem in less than 60 minutes." In addition, PETCO recently upgraded to EMC NetWorker(TM) 7.3 software. The improved manageability and simplified user interface provided by NetWorker 7.3 has further streamlined tape backup operations for PETCO. EMC Global Services has assisted PETCO in applying best practices to migration strategies, disk configuration and SAN topology. EMC Global Services also collaborated with Microsoft to provide PETCO with Microsoft Ranger services to help it optimize its Exchange environment. "We view EMC as a partner in our business," said Rosenzweig. "They not only make sure they understand our environment, but how to help us design our infrastructure so that it supports our growing operation. We've expanded significantly since we became an EMC customer four years ago, and EMC has given us the performance, reliability and support we've needed to move our business forward and succeed." About EMC and PETCO EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at http://www.emc.com/. PETCO is a leading specialty retailer of premium pet food, supplies and services. PETCO's vision is to best promote, through its people, the highest level of well being for companion animals, and to support the human-animal bond. PETCO generated net sales of $2 billion in fiscal 2005. It operates 815 stores in 49 states and the District of Columbia, as well as a leading destination for online pet food and supplies at http://www.petco.com/. Since its inception in 1999, The PETCO Foundation, PETCO's non-profit organization, has raised more than $30 million in support of more than 3,500 non-profit grassroots animal welfare organizations around the nation. EMC, Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Celerra and ControlCenter are register trademarks of EMC Corporation. Symmetrix DMX and NetWorker are trademarks of EMC Corporation. All other product names mentioned are the property of their respective vendors. Contact: Patrick Cooley 508-293-6583 DATASOURCE: EMC Corporation CONTACT: Patrick Cooley, +1-508-293-6583, Web site: http://www.emc.com/

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