Across the PRD in the other SAR, Macau, casinos face data requirements as strict as many financial institutions. And, like financial-sector enterprises, they run their tech-gear 24/7.

At the Venetian Macao on the Cotai Strip, customers stream to its myriad casinos at any time of the day or night. According to Ashleigh Gilson, director of IT, The Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel and The Casino Plaza, there are on average 8,000 transactions per hour at each of the company's three casinos--gaming operations that never close.

Last year, the company decided to buy a new storage system to replace HP equipment purchased in 2006. "The HP system was an aging storage infrastructure with limited flexibility--it couldn't support virtualization, tiered storage, and business expansion at Venetian Macao," said Gilson. "If we didn't buy a new system, we'd need to pay a lot more to upgrade the existing system and for future maintenance."

In addition, there were critical technical issues that Venetian Macao had to resolve. "In 2011, our storage level was already at 90% while backup time on average exceeded 15 hours--we definitely needed to reduce the backup window," he noted.