The Storage Service Provider Competitive Landscape Adam W. Couture
Outsourced storage services is one of the hottest new markets in the IT industry today. Eyeing world revenue potential that is expected to near $7 billion by 2003, both established and startup companies now offer a wide variety of storage services targeting various market segments. Gartner Dataquest examines how the competitive battlefield is emerging and profiles key competitors.
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Executive Summary........................................................................................................................... 5 Storage Service Provider and Utility Definitions................................................................... 5 Storage Service Provider Strategies .................................................................................... 5 Storage Service Provider Profiles ........................................................................................ 6
Carving Out a Niche in the Storage Service Provider Market ........................................................... 7 Managed Hosting and Internet Data Centers....................................................................... 8 Corporate Data Centers ....................................................................................................... 8 Virtual Private Storage Centers............................................................................................ 9 Storage MSPs....................................................................................................................... 9 Storage Service Provider Segmentation .............................................................................. 9
Storage Service Provider Profiles.................................................................................................... 11 Arsenal Digital Solutions..................................................................................................... 12
Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 13 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 13 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 13
Centripetal .......................................................................................................................... 13 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 13 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 14 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 14
Comdisco............................................................................................................................ 14 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 14 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 14 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 15
Compaq Computer ............................................................................................................. 15 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 15 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 15 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 15
CreekPath Systems............................................................................................................ 16 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 16 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 16 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 16
EDS .................................................................................................................................... 16 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 17 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 17 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 17
Forsythe Solutions Group................................................................................................... 17 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 18 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 18 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 18
Hitachi Data Systems ......................................................................................................... 18 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 18 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 19 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 19
IBM ..................................................................................................................................... 19 Go-to-Market Plans ............................................................................................... 19 Service Offerings ................................................................................................... 19 Unique Capabilities and Technologies .................................................................. 20
ManagedStorage International ........................................................................................... 20
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Executive Summary Two years ago, the storage service provider (SSP) field of competition was a lonely place. Although a handful of vendors made a number of intermittent announcements related to storage utility services, only one vendor was actively marketing and selling them — StorageNetworks. Today, the competitive landscape is beginning to get clogged with companies attempting to position themselves and their services into differentiable market niches. Gartner Dataquest tracks more than a score of storage utility and related-storage service competitors, ranging from "pure play" startups to established hardware and service providers.
Storage Service Provider and Utility Definitions An SSP provides a wide variety of storage-related infrastructure and management service offerings — from backup and recovery to capacity provisioning to broad-scope storage management. SSPs also may deliver storage professional services, including assessment, design, operations and management services.
For consistency and clarity, Gartner Dataquest defines the storage utility as the provisioning of storage capacity for servers on a usage basis. This capacity may be delivered at a user site or remotely via a network or the Internet. An array of storage services may be delivered in conjunction with this capacity, ranging from administration services, backup of servers and PCs, system and file recovery and restoration services, archiving, data warehousing, and others. Services related to customer-owned hardware do not constitute a storage utility. Gartner Dataquest classifies these as operational or managed services.
Two other concepts are important to this survey: the public storage utility vs. the private storage utility. The public utility refers to storage utility services provisioned primarily at Internet data centers or similar colocation or hosting facilities where all or some of the storage infrastructure is normally shared by a number of companies. The private utility refers to storage utility services delivered at a corporate data center where an SSP manages a dedicated storage infrastructure.
Storage Service Provider Strategies This report examines how the current crop of SSPs market their services and the market niches they are attempting to carve out. They all market to one or more of the following prospects:
• On-site to users at public Internet data centers (tenants of Exodus, Level 3 and so forth)
• On-site to users at corporate data centers
• Remotely to users anywhere via network storage
• Other service providers (such as Internet data centers, application service providers [ASPs], other SSPs and so forth)
These categories are explained in the "Carving Out a Niche in the Storage Service Provider Market" section, along with a table comparing how various SSPs are delivering storage utility services.
This report also looks at the emergence of the management service provider (MSP) model for storage. This is a remote monitoring and management service for customer-owned storage hardware. More and more SSPs are beginning to offer storage MSP services on a stand-alone
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basis or in conjunction with other storage services — either as a primary business model or in conjunction with strategies to market to corporate data centers.
Storage Service Provider Profiles This report concludes with miniprofiles of 21 SSPs competing in North America. Each profile looks at the vendor's go-to-market strategies, service offerings and unique technologies or capabilities. The companies profiled do not encompass the definitive list of every SSP in North America. For example, Internet data centers delivering SSP services only to their own customers are addressed but not profiled in this analysis. Similarly, vendors providing a variety of storage services were not included unless they also offered storage capacity services (the "storage utility" as defined by Gartner Dataquest). Interestingly, two of the companies profiled, Storability and StorageLink, originally offered storage utility services but have since dropped them from their primary service portfolios. However, the two companies are still profiled because they demonstrate how the storage utility competitive landscape continually evolves, and they may again address storage utility solutions for corporate data center customers as demand increases.
SSPs profiled include the following:
• Arsenal Digital Solutions
• Centripetal
• Comdisco
• Compaq Computer
• CreekPath
• EDS
• Forsythe Solutions
• Hitachi Data Systems
• IBM
• ManagedStorage International
• sanrise
• Scale Eight
• Storability
• Storage Access
• Storage Alliance
• StorageASP
• StorageLink
• StorageNetworks
• StorageProvider
• StorageWay
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Although every attempt was made to include all U.S. and Canadian storage utility service providers in this profile, the storage utility market is extremely dynamic, with new players being announced almost every month. Similarly, SSPs are constantly augmenting their portfolios and entering into new partnerships and alliances. Finally, attempting to provide one-page profiles means that a great deal of individual company information must be condensed or omitted. For these reasons, Gartner Dataquest advises readers to consult vendor Web sites for the latest company information.
Project Analyst: Adam Couture
Carving Out a Niche in the Storage Service Provider Market When new service providers enter the storage service outsourcing market, they inevitably try to position themselves as unique in the marketplace. However, as illustrated in Figure 2-1, Gartner Dataquest believes there are only three basic SSP models, with a number of variations based upon how and where storage utility capacity or management services are delivered. These include:
• Managed hosting and Internet data centers
• On-site at corporate data centers
• Virtual private storage centers
Figure 2-1. Basic Storage Utility Models
96844-02-01
PrivateUtility
MSP
Public Utility
InternetData
CenterCustomers
ManagedHostingCenter
Customers
VirtualPrivate
Storage Center
Corporate Data Center
Source: Gartner Dataquest (March 2001)
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Managed Hosting and Internet Data Centers For the majority of SSPs, managed hosting and Internet data centers are the venue of choice, and storage utility providers operating from public Internet data centers could potentially opt for one of three business models:
• Sell storage capacity or services to companies hosting their servers at the Internet data centers
• Sell remote storage capacity or services to corporate data centers or other Internet data centers
• Some combination of the above
The most common, and currently the most successful, model is selling storage capacity and services to customers of Internet data centers. Internet data centers already own the customer relationship, so sales and marketing expenses are minimized. Moreover, the Internet data center can be a powerful channel partner, reselling storage utility services as Exodus does with StorageNetworks and StorageWay and Inflow does with ManagedStorage International.
Although it is technically possible for a storage utility service provider to reside at an Internet data center and only sell remote services to corporate data centers and other Internet data centers, Gartner Dataquest isn't aware of any company that has adopted this model. Those companies residing at Internet data centers and offering remote storage capacity and management services to corporate data centers also market to other facility tenants.
A variation of the Internet and managed data center models has data center owners providing outsourced storage capacity and services directly to their tenants. Some companies, such as CreekPath and Arsenal Digital Solutions, build and manage storage utility infrastructures for Internet data centers right at their own sites. Additionally, a handful of Internet and managed hosting data center providers have opted to build and manage their own storage utility solutions. For example, at their private Internet data centers, IBM and EDS provide on-demand storage capacity and management independently or as part of Web hosting, applications services provisioning, or network or security services. Similarly, Qwest, NaviSite, Accesscolo and Infocrossing continue to build and manage their own storage utility capabilities at their Internet data centers around the world.
Corporate Data Centers Corporate data centers are the traditional brick-and-mortar data centers owned and managed by most of the Fortune 2000. These data centers are also where the vast majority of enterprise-class storage hardware is shipped. They may be epicenters for LANs and WANs, but ordinarily don't sit atop an IT backbone like Internet data centers.
Many SSPs market remote storage capacity and management services (usually hosted at Internet data centers) to corporate data centers. However, so far, most have met with limited success because remote networked storage tends to carry a great deal of baggage such as security, loss of control and standards concerns and a host of other issues inhibiting storage utility services at corporate data centers.
Compaq, IBM, ManagedStorage International and StorageNetworks are attempting to overcome this trepidation through what some are terming a "private" storage utility. Essentially, a private utility is a local storage network built at the customer's data center. The service provider owns and manages the storage infrastructure (although management may be remote), and customers pay for the service on a usage basis. Providers of private storage utility services often make
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"public" storage utility connections available to corporate data centers to augment capacity that is provided locally.
Virtual Private Storage Centers Virtual private storage centers are dedicated storage data centers wholly owned or operated by an SSP. What makes these centers unique is that they are dedicated to storage services and only storage services. Unlike Internet data centers or managed hosting data centers, no customer hosts its servers or applications from these centers. Moreover, customer access is always network-dependent whether that network is Fibre Channel, Ethernet or Internet Protocol (IP).
Scale Eight is one example of a private storage center. This company specializes in large unstructured files, including video and audio that can be downloaded or streamed over the Internet from one or both of Scale Eight's private storage centers at AboveNet Internet data centers. Zantaz, Iron Mountain and LiveVault are other companies managing private storage data centers. Zantaz and Iron Mountain specialize in archiving, while LiveVault provides online backup and vaulting — albeit through Iron Mountain facilities and infrastructure. Like Scale Eight, none of these companies provide server-centric storage capacity for dynamic files. Nor do they intend to provide services requiring their presence at customer sites.
Storage MSPs A recent wrinkle in the SSP market is the emergence of storage MSPs. The MSP label is being adopted by a variety of vendors that provide services ranging from basic infrastructure monitoring to the provisioning of a complete, outsourced infrastructure for customer applications. Some could also be considered ASPs because their services may include IT management tools (for example, Tivoli and CA Unicenter provisioned and billed on a usage basis). However, for the purposes of this report, MSPs provide remote monitoring and management for customer-owned IT infrastructures.
Several SSPs offer MSP services for client-owned storage infrastructures. These can include simply remote monitoring for availability, or can include administration, capacity planning, tuning, upgrades, corrective action and, ultimately, administration and operation of the customer's storage environment. Forsythe Solutions, Storability, StorageLink and StorageNetworks offer MSP services. Forsythe subsidiary Nuclio is a full-fledged MSP in its own right, delivering managed services for servers and networks as well as storage hardware. Interestingly, Storability and StorageLink originally offered storage utility services but have subsequently dropped them in favor of MSP offerings.
One of the primary motivators for SSPs to offer MSP services is that most of their customers at corporate data centers and many at Internet data centers often already own storage infrastructures and don't want to abandon these investments. MSP offerings allow them to outsource management or operations of their infrastructures either as a stand-alone service or in conjunction with other storage services — sometimes including utility services.
Storage Service Provider Segmentation Table 2-1 illustrates how the various categories of SSPs target their markets. Although further segmentations are possible, for simplicity purposes, four categories were chosen and include the following:
• On-site to users at public Internet data centers (tenants of AboveNet, Exodus, Level 3 and so forth)
• On-site to users at corporate data centers
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• Other service providers (such as Internet data centers, ASP, other storage service providers and so on)
Categories of storage service and utility vendors listed in the first column of Table 2-1 are broken down into the following:
• SSPs
• Internet data centers providing their own storage utility services
• Internet data centers reselling storage and storage utility services
• Virtual private storage centers
Although Table 2-1 provides a large sampling of categorical storage utility vendors, it is not intended to be a comprehensive listing of every company providing some sort of storage-related service in North America. Additionally, not every company listed in Table 2-1 is profiled in this report.
It is noteworthy that most competitors target multiple segments. For example, IBM provides services to customers at their own Internet data centers, public Internet data centers or at corporate data centers. ManagedStorage and StorageNetworks target users at Internet and corporate data centers and also provides remote network storage capabilities.
Table 2-1. Storage Utility Target Prospects
Storage Service Provider Target User
On-Site at Internet Data Centers
On-Site at Corporate Data Centers
Remote Network Storage
Other SSPs
Storage Service Provider
Arsenal Digital X X X
Centripetal X
Comdisco X X X
Compaq X X X X
CreekPath X
EDS X X X X
Forsythe X X X
Hitachi Data Systems
X X X
IBM X X X
ManagedStorage X X X X
Qwest X
sanrise X X
Storability X X X
Storage Access X X X
Storage Alliance X X X
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Storage Service Provider Profiles The company profiles presented in this section are restricted to storage service vendors providing either public or private storage utility services. For the purpose of clarity and simplicity, virtual private storage centers and Internet data centers were specifically excluded.
Although every attempt was made to include all U.S. and Canadian storage utility service providers in this profile, the SSP market is dynamic with new players being announced almost every month. Similarly, SSPs are constantly augmenting their portfolios and entering into new partnerships and alliances. Finally, attempting to provide one-page profiles means that a great deal of individual company information must be condensed or omitted. For these reasons, Gartner Dataquest advises readers to consult vendor Web sites for the latest company information.
Twenty-one SSPs are documented in this profile. They include:
• Arsenal Digital Solutions
• Centripetal
• Comdisco
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Arguably, Scale Eight is an outrider to the other 20 companies profiled because the company's business model is that of a virtual private storage center. However, Gartner Dataquest deemed that Scale Eight should be included because it is representative of the growing number of niche players targeting the storage utility service market. Additionally, Storability and StorageLink could have been excluded because they no longer focus on true storage utility services (storage capacity on demand from a vendor-owned infrastructure). However, both these companies originally offered storage utility services as a component of their service portfolios. As a consequence, they are included in this report.
Arsenal Digital Solutions • Founded — 1999
• Corporate headquarters — Durham, North Carolina
• CEO — Kevin H. Pollard
• President and COO — Geoff Sinn
• CTO — Dr. Vijay Ahuja
• Employees — 90
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• Major strategic alliances — Sun, EMC, AT&T, Verio and Peak 10
• Web site — www.arsenaldigital.com
Go-to-Market Plans Arsenal Digital primarily pursues a channel strategy. Its services are resold or passed through Internet data centers that re-brand and resell them (that is, AT&T, Verio, Peak 10). The company also sells directly to end users with a focus on ASPs and medical, e-learning and publishing verticals. Half of the company's sales focus on direct sales and half on channels.
Service Offerings • Disk utility (9GB minimum) — A fully managed primary storage capacity offering backed
by financially guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs)
• Backup and restore utility — A fully managed server backup and restore solution for Internet data centers or remote customers
Unique Capabilities and Technologies Arsenal is initiating the deployment of unique storage security technologies and procedures, as well as developing its own storage management portal and billing application (scalable up to 2 billion transactions per month). Arsenal's acquisition of filefrenzy brought the company application programming interface (API) technologies that allows it to integrate value-added functionality to its storage utility platform to include file management, file sharing and collaboration.
Centripetal • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — La Mesa, California
• Founder — Michael Ehman
• CEO — James C. Kelly
• Employees — Nine
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — Angel financing
• Locations — Six
• Major strategic alliances — Level 3
• Web site — www.centripetal.com
Go-to-Market Plans Centripetal focuses on prospects in metropolitan markets with moderate storage needs but whose storage requirements are growing rapidly. Centripetal will sell through, not to, Internet data centers. Centripetal is the first Level 3 partner for its Integrated Partner Program. Level 3 will be
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the company's primary provider of bandwidth and act as a significant distribution channel. Centripetal intends to work with the Level 3 sales force to sell Centripetal solutions to the Level 3 customer base. Recently, the company has honed its focus to backup and recovery services.
Service Offerings • Data backup and recovery services with tape or optical archiving
• Data storage services — Storage area network (SAN)-based RAID storage capacity
• Disaster avoidance, including remote mirroring and clustering of data and servers
• Global storage management and monitoring
Unique Capabilities and Technologies Centripetal follows a capital-efficient business model, leveraging the network, sales and marketing platforms and management systems of its partners.
Comdisco • Storage utility service launched — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Rosemont, Illinois
• President and CEO — Norman P. Blake
• Storage services vice president and general manager — Mark Avery
• Storage services employees — More than 125
• Ownership — Public (NYSE: CDO)
• Locations — 48 (13 U.S. data centers)
• Major strategic alliance — EMC
• Web site — www.comdisco.com
Go-to-Market Plans Comdisco covers the storage service waterfront with traditional outsourced storage management solutions, professional services and SLA-based storage utility services. The company caters to corporate data centers, Internet data centers and customers provisioning services at Comdisco service centers.
As a business continuity service provider, Comdisco believes its SSP model has a distinct competitive advantage over other SSP vendors in that it not only can protect but also can recover customer data using its existing infrastructure supporting the Continuity Services Division. Comdisco's target markets include finance, insurance and healthcare. Comdisco will initially focus on the United States and then look to Europe.
Service Offerings • Enterprise storage solutions — Design, implement and manage on-premises storage
• Storage utility solutions — On-demand usage-based storage capacity and services under SLA hosted at a customer's site or at Comdisco
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• Professional services — Storage consultants and project managers assess current customer storage environments; identify storage and availability needs; design, test, implement, monitor and manage solutions.
• Availability and data protection — Availability, recovery and tape backup and restore solutions to support customers' storage environments
Unique Capabilities and Technologies Comdisco has traditional capabilities and experience in continuity services as well as its own Internet data centers and private network.
• Storage utility employees — 25 in storage business unit
• Ownership — Public (NYSE)
• Locations — All North American and European Compaq offices
• Major strategic alliances — Acxiom, Computer Associates, Digex, Legato, NaviSite, Nupremis, Storability, StorageNetworks, StorageProvider, Tivoli and VERITAS
• Web site — www.compaq.com
Go-to-Market Plans Compaq focuses on private services at corporate data centers, and large service providers in North America and Europe. Compaq trains its own as well as channel partners sales to focus initial storage utility service sales on the installed base. It bundles assessment and design services in capacity pricing. Compaq also provisions utility service infrastructures to SSPs.
Service Offerings • Basic service — Basic managed capacity service includes site assessment/design;
installation, configuration, startup; remote management; capacity management; storage management portal (customer access to management and monitoring); warranty and maintenance.
• Optional services — Backup and restore, remote copy, local copy, enhanced response, recover-all, buyback, data migration and other custom services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies The Compaq private storage utility combines flexible product configurations based on Compaq StorageWorks and SANworks products, Compaq Global Services, and remote management by Compaq through its network of operations management centers, where Compaq continually monitors and manages its private storage utility.
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• Major strategic alliances — Exabyte, Inflow and FirstWorld
• Web site — www.creekpath.com
Go-to-Market Plans CreekPath is a spinoff of Exabyte. CreekPath's business model is to partner with Internet data centers to install high-performance SANs and cooperatively lease storage services to companies hosting or colocating Web servers inside the Internet data center. The Internet data center markets and sells the service to its customers and shares revenue with CreekPath. CreekPath has a "build to order" philosophy and won't build a storage infrastructure unless it has a resale agreement. (Note: At the time of this writing, CreekPath was in the process of selling its storage services to concentrate on developing storage technologies.)
Service Offerings • Primary storage — RAID 5 or RAID 10 disk array formats, 10GB minimum backup
services included with two-week on-site retention, 100 percent uptime SLA
• Backup and recovery
• Offsite tape retention
• Data recovery
• Data tape duplication
Unique Capabilities and Technologies "CreekPort" storage portal software allows requests for service changes, detailed usage reports and review of current bill. Exabyte also transferred proprietary remote SAN management software to CreekPath. The company will use the software in its Internet SAN (i-SAN) installations to build storage environments.
EDS • Storage utility services launched — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Plano, Texas
• President and CEO — Richard H. Brown
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• Locations — 12 global service management centers and 70 regional sites
• Major strategic alliances — Akamai and EMC (EMC Proven)
• Web site — www.eds.com
Go-to-Market Plans EDS' strategies are providing flexible storage utility services for Internet data center customers within its own data centers and remotely managing storage located at client sites from EDS global service management centers. EDS also supports other service providers, such as Akamai, by building and managing storage on-demand services for content replication that are integrated with other on-demand hosting services. EDS' storage utility service is an adjunct to other storage-related services, including storage consultation, implementation and management. The company also has a secondary push to corporate data centers under EDS management.
Service Offerings • Managed storage services — Scalable storage and extensive backup services on an on-
demand basis. A range of packaged services is available, with increasing scalability, availability and time-to-service guarantees.
• Storage strategy services — Professional services include business analysis, IT analysis and solution development for storage services, such as availability, data migration and business continuity
• Storage interconnect services — Professional services for SAN architecture, implementation and (optional) management services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies As one of the largest systems integrators and MSPs in the world, EDS can address IT outsourcing and management requirements far beyond storage services, including network and server management.
Forsythe Solutions Group • Storage utility services launched — 2001
• Corporate headquarters — Skokie, Illinois
• Forsythe storage solutions vice president — Philip Tenca
Go-to-Market Plans Forsythe offers assessment, design, integration and management services for storage, servers and networks from EMC, Sun, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco. Storage utility services were launched to enhance the company's storage offerings. Management services for the infrastructure as well as the application are available through its sister company, Nuclio.
Forsythe and Nuclio customers can acquire storage capacity through purchase, lease or on a utility basis. Forsythe markets to end users in the public and private utility sectors, although the majority of engagements are corporate data centers. Target prospects include 2,500 Forsythe and 40 Nuclio customers in addition to new customers.
Service Offerings • Managed storage services — Scalable storage on a demand basis with increasing
scalability, availability and time-to-service guarantees. Design and planning, transition and implementation, 24x7 management and monitoring and fully customizable reporting are available.
• Backup and recovery services — Tape backup and vaulting, centralized backup and restore, instant test environment and more
• Business continuity services —Second copy, point-in-time recovery and global business continuance
Unique Capabilities and Technologies Working with Nuclio, Forsythe can provide outsourced services including servers, networks and even desktops ranging from infrastructure assessment, design, integration and financing to remote server monitoring and management, and application hosting services. Nuclio also provides a management portal for storage and other services.
Hitachi Data Systems • Storage utility service launched — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Santa Clara, California
• Storage utility programs director — Roger Marvinney
• Dedicated storage utility employees — Not available
• Ownership — Public (NYSE)
• Locations — Global Utility Centers in California and the United Kingdom
• Web site — www.hds.com
Go-to-Market Plans Hitachi Data Systems' "Just in Time" storage solution is primarily a service that has a product component — HDS Freedom Storage. Hitachi packages its Freedom series with additional capacity that can be tapped at any time. Software and incremental services are packaged with the capacity, which is billed on a usage basis. Hitachi targets SSPs and enterprises looking at storage as a utility that users can tap as needed and pay for only what they use.
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Service Offerings • Capacity on demand — Through pre-provisioned packaging
• Capacity forecasting — Capacity planning information to manage the actual growth of enterprise storage components and subsystems
• Centralized control — Customers enter commands at a remote keyboard to upgrade disk and cache capacity and the number of host connections.
• Storage management services — Co-management and on-site recommendations of strategic storage management to full tactical and long-range management
• Business continuity — Customer-activated "point in time" copy and remote copy functions
Unique Capabilities and Technologies The monitoring and billing system based on Hitachi's proprietary "Hi-Track" call home capability is built into the Freedom Storage unit. Units communicate with Global Utility Centers in California and the United Kingdom. Proprietary microcode for metering enables customers to self-upgrade without vendor intervention.
• Locations — 250 e-business hosting centers, including AT&T, Equinix and Qwest facilities
• Web site — www.ibm.com
Go-to-Market Plans Storage utility service announcements made in the summer of 2000 simply codified services IBM was already providing. IBM covers the storage utility service waterfront, offering private storage utility services to corporate data centers, public storage utility services to Internet data centers, plus storage on-demand services to hosted customers at IBM facilities. IBM also intends to make these services available for resale through its channel partners. During 2001, IBM plans to roll out storage points of presence (SPOPs) throughout the world.
Service Offerings • Storage consulting services — Storage assessment; architecture and technical design;
data migration services; installation and maintenance
• Managed storage services — Storage capacity on demand (pay as you go); 7x24x365 monitoring and support; problem and change management; storage provisioning services; high-performance, high-availability options (including Raid 5); backup and
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restore; archive and vaulting; local and remote copying; capacity planning/performance monitoring; business continuity and recovery services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies IBM's storage services will support technologies from IBM and other storage technology providers (for example, McData, Brocade, EMC and Compaq). From a storage management perspective, IBM plans to leverage storage management technologies from Tivoli — particularly Tivoli's SANview products. Additionally, IBM intends to develop automation tools to facilitate rapid storage infrastructure deployment and a Web portal for customer service.
ManagedStorage International • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Westminster, Colorado
• President and CEO —Thomas Sweeney
• Storage utility employees — 230 worldwide
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — Great Hill Partners, Providence Equity, First Union, JP Morgan, EMC and StorageTek
• Locations — 13 in the United States and four in Europe (United Kingdom, Netherlands and France)
• Major strategic alliances — StorageTek, EMC, Front Porch, Level 3, Inflow (exclusive) and Global Center
• Web site — www.managedstorage.com
Go-to-Market Plans ManagedStorage International was spun off from StorageTek. The company offers private and public storage utility services as well as remote network storage capacity. ManagedStorage's intellectual property (software) allows ManagedStorage to offer incremental services such as server backup, archiving and PC backup tailored to a utility storage model. ManagedStorage focuses on specific industries, including broadcast/entertainment, banking and healthcare. ManagedStorage offers storage utility services for resale through Internet data centers as private-branded services.
Service Offerings • PowerNODE — Storage capacity on demand
• PowerBAK server edition — Server backup services
• PowerBAK personal edition — PC backup services
• PowerCONTENT — Archival services and data object management
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Unique Capabilities and Technologies ManagedStorage technologies include PowerBAK PC backup tools and the PowerCONTENT storage management applications and compression and data object management technology. PowerBAK is the basis for ManagedStorage's PC backup solution. Additionally, compression and data object technologies allow it to address certain industries such as broadcast/entertainment, healthcare and finance.
sanrise • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Dublin, California
• CEO — David Schneider
• Employees — 140
• Ownership — Private
• Some of the investors — Crosspoint, Comdisco, Exodus, Fenwick & West, GATX, Hitachi, Morgan Stanley, StorageTek, Texas Pacific and VERITAS
• Locations — 45 (including 39 Exodus facilities)
• Major strategic alliances —Exodus, Brocade, HDS, VERITAS, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Crossroads, Foundry Networks
• Web site — www.sanrise.com
Go-to-Market Plans sanrise is a public storage utility provider marketing to Internet data centers and their customers. In January 2001, the company was catapulted into the SSP forefront by assuming operations for the service delivery and customer support of the Exodus DataVault tape backup and restore service business and approximately 600 subscribers. Customer satisfaction is a major sanrise initiative and is driven by a three-tiered customer advocacy organization: channel managers, systems architects and client business managers. The company markets its services under the "storagetone" brand.
Service Offerings • Storagetone disk on demand — Via the sanrise fiber-optic SAN
• Storagetone backup and restore — Including server-free backup
• Sanrise professional services — Storage assessment, evaluation and design
Unique Capabilities and Technologies The sanrise storagetone portal includes a variety of global news, information and published reports to help customers stay current with storage technology. Customers of sanrise can use the portal to access mystoragetone.com — a secure Web-based tool providing real-time customized reports and metrics.
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• Corporate headquarters — San Francisco, California
• Founder and CTO — Joshua Coates
• President and CEO — Richard Watts
• Employees — 125
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — Led by InterWest Partners and Oak Investment Partners
• Locations — Four Exodus facilities (Virginia, California, London and Tokyo)
• Major strategic alliances — Akamai and Exodus (price book)
• Web site — www.s8.com
Go-to-Market Plans Scale Eight is not a typical storage utility service provider. Scale Eight operates an intelligent global network that stores, manages and distributes files. Scale Eight doesn't sell storage capacity to co-residents at Internet data centers. Instead, it markets its capabilities to store, manage and move large files, including images, video and audio. Because of this focus, entertainment, corporate training, unified messaging and broadcast industries are target verticals. Scale Eight also sells its capacity services to other service providers for resale to their customers. The company's first relationships of this type were with Akamai and Exodus.
Service Offerings • Fully mirrored storage at its sites — 0.3TB minimum
Unique Capabilities and Technologies Scale Eight's infrastructure is based upon proprietary patent-pending architecture and software technology. The company has eight patents pending. Customers are provided with a thin-client device called a "MediaPort" that plugs into their servers that give them access to all Scale Eight storage capacity on demand. Scale Eight has developed a portal, ServiceView, to let customers monitor capacity and bandwidth utilization.
• Investors — Battery Ventures, Madison Dearborn and Lightspeed
• Locations — Southborough, London, Sydney and Hong Kong
• Major strategic alliances — EMC, VERITAS and Brocade
• Web site — www.storability.com
Go-to-Market Plans Storability's business model is to deliver customer-dedicated managed storage services to corporate data centers as well as enterprise customers located within Internet data centers. This is primarily an MSP model. Additionally, Storability will build infrastructure that allows Internet data centers to offer managed storage services themselves. Storability's sales model includes direct, channel and partner sales forces. All pricing is custom quoted.
Service Offerings • AssuredOperation — Proactive management, monitoring and reporting
• AssuredVolume — Capacity, performance, availability, recoverability and security
• AssuredRestore — Backup, archive and restore
• AssuredRecovery — Disaster tolerance implementation and operation
• AssuredAssessment — Inventory, total cost of ownership (TCO), process analysis and recommendations
Unique Capabilities and Technologies The remote management architecture includes dedicated secure network, automated processing systems and operations centers in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia as well as proprietary monitoring and management tools and technologies.
Storage Access • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Boca Raton, Florida
• President and COO — Jon Castleman
• Employees — 30
• Ownership — Public (SSP: CDNX)
• Locations — Five
• Major strategic alliances — Wavve Telecommunications, Search, Conectium, Storage Point and Champion Solutions
• Web site — www.storageaccess.com
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Go-to-Market Plans Originating from Champion Computer, Storage Access colocates in data centers occupied by its partners that resell its storage services. Partner targets include other service providers. Two primary reseller classifications are: "platinum" for those with a colocation facility that will house and resell an Access Point and "gold" for partners that want to brand and sell managed storage services but do not have a data center. Management will be centrally controlled through a Global Network Operations Center architecture. Three facilities are online: San Diego, Boca Raton and Miami. Another 12 (United States, Europe, Pacific Rim and South America) will be online in 2001.
Service Offerings • @ccess capacity on demand
• @ccess data protection services
• @ccess data replication
• @ccess business continuance
• @ccess consulting services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies • Utility model for delivering a set of managed storage services
• Vendor-neutral technical strategy
• Channel-based sales strategy
Storage Alliance • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Calgary, Alberta
• President — Jeff Ascah
• Employees — 14
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — DKJ and Request Seismic
• Locations — Two (Infocast, Group Telecom, Calgary)
• Major strategic alliances — Infocast, Sun, VERITAS, Group Telecom and Jason Geosystems
• Web site — www.storagealliance.com
Go-to-Market Plans The "Alliance" in Storage Alliance's name refers to how the company teams with its customers to facilitate and deliver solutions to end clients. Initial customer base is in the oil and gas exploration market. Storage Alliance specializes in storing and transporting large image files, particularly 2-D and 3-D seismic files. ASPs and other oil and gas solution providers leverage Storage Alliance's capabilities to enhance solutions and expand sales opportunities. Storage Alliance claims core
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capabilities in integrating key data storage strategies and solutions with specific ASP products and tools. The company initially will focus on Calgary and then expand to other oil and gas markets. Secondary markets include medical and media.
Service Offerings • DataPort — Primary storage on demand services
• TransPort — Replication services including point-in-time snapshots and mirroring
• LinkPort — Storage utility services packaged for ASPs
• PortAge — Archival, retrieval and disaster recovery service
• Storage experts (professional services) — Architecture planning, systems integration and project management
Unique Capabilities and Technologies The company is investing in several technology initiatives, including: large image management and transport; proprietary security; and proprietary measurement and management. It also has entered a hierarchical storage management (HSM) development initiative with VERITAS.
StorageASP • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Sunnyvale, California
• Founder and CEO — Wayne Kim
• Employees — 30
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — Not disclosed
• Locations — Two
• Major strategic alliances — EMC, Hitachi, Sun and ZOI Net
• Web site — www.storageasp.com
Go-to-Market Plans StorageASP is a sister company of ZOI Net, a South Korean SSP founded by CEO Wayne Kim. The company markets to the "public" utility sector, including ASPs — initially in North America only (operations in Toronto and Santa Clara). StorageASP will lead with backup and recovery services (data protection). Storage capacity services are available but considered secondary to backup and recovery in the company's sales and marketing. StorageASP plans to build market credibility through vendor certifications (for example, EMC Proven and SunTone). StorageASP positions its services as cost-effective.
Service Offerings • TERA-Back — Backup and restore
• TERA-Rep — Real-time data replication
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• TERA-Remote — Remote replication including disaster recovery
• TERA Service — Professional services for analysis/design, implementation and customization
• TERA-Stor — Storage capacity on demand
Unique Capabilities and Technologies Custom portal (TERA-View) allows customers to manage and retrieve data. StorageASP provides extended file restoration technologies and methodologies. StorageASP plans ASP relationships to provide incremental data-related services, including data mining.
StorageLink • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Bellevue, Washington
• CEO — Jack De Blasi
• Employees — 30
• Ownership — Owned by Sansia System Solutions
• Locations — Four Western U.S. metropolitan areas
• Major strategic alliances — Tivoli and IBM
• Web site — www.storagelink.net
Go-to-Market Plans StorageLink is an IBM reseller supplying business continuation and data protection services. The company targets colocated Internet data center customers as well as large enterprise customers. Sales are direct and through data centers and optical IP network partnerships. StorageLink plans to expand to all of the major Tier 1 North American metropolitan areas by year's end.
Service Offerings • Backup and restore — Backup and restore any type of data on any major computer
platform through a point-and-click browser interface. The data are always online and available for a no-cost, user-initiated restore. Hot backups available for major databases and applications. One-step restores through a browser interface.
• Archive and recovery — Long-term archiving of data for audit and historical requirements. Archived data are always online and retrievable via a point-and-click browser interface.
• Disaster recovery services — One-step, bare-metal restore services, data replication and second-copy services to a disaster recovery site
• Professional services — Business continuity consulting services for disaster recovery planning and implementation. Remote backup and restore system management services available as well.
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Unique Capabilities and Technologies • Managed services based upon Tivoli technology
• Detailed daily reporting and historical information graphing via a Web-based customer portal
• Building a national business continuity network infrastructure
StorageNetworks • Founded — 1998
• Corporate headquarters — Waltham, Massachusetts
• President and CEO — Peter W. Bell
• Employees — More than 600
• Ownership — Public (NASDAQ: STOR)
• Locations — 51 data centers including London and Frankfurt
• Major strategic alliances — Exodus, Global Center, Equinix, ATT Hosting, COLT, Enron and Vicom
• Web site — www.storagenetworks.com
Go-to-Market Plans StorageNetworks' sales strategy is to sell directly and co-sell through partner relationships. The company has two sales forces: one for Internet data center customers and another for corporate data center customers. StorageNetworks delivers storage management services to customers in three ways: on-site services, including private utility and MSP storage services; services within Internet data centers to customers within these environments; second-site services to enterprise customers, including off-site tape and synchronous replication.
Service Offerings • DataPACS — Primary data storage services (SAN)
• NetPACS — Primary data storage services network-attached storage (NAS)
• STORwidth — Primary data storage services for media andcontent distribution
• BackPACS — Backup and restore services
• SafePACS — Real-time data replication and business continuity services
• STORmanage — Co-managed storage services for customer-owned hardware
• Professional services — Consulting
Unique Capabilities and Technologies The company has developed a storage-specific operating system, STORos, that puts the intelligence into a storage network and is the foundation for its management applications,
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including a portal for storage and service management and control software that manages the company's Global Data Storage Network.
StorageProvider • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Austin, Texas
• President and CEO — Reagan Dixon
• Employees — 52
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — Angel investors
• Locations — Seven
• Major strategic alliances — Level 3, Broadwing, Compaq, Brocade and Network Associates
• Web site — www.storageprovider.com
Go-to-Market Plans StorageProvider focuses on Internet data centers' customers. The company's strategy is to provide SSP services to Internet data centers in "second tier" cities such as Austin and Houston, where major SSPs don't have a presence. Services are marketed under the "Professional Advantage" brand architecture. Services are geared for midsize businesses and smaller increments of scalability. This regional model targets U.S. cities only. StorageProvider pays a referral fee to current customers or Internet data centers bringing it new business.
Service Offerings • OnlinePro — Storage capacity on demand (minimum 50GB)
• ProConsult — Assessment and architecture professional services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies StorageProvider was the first SSP member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The company also has developed "StorageView" — a portal for customers and partners.
Although pricing is specified in the customer contract, it will automatically adjust downward if StorageProvider lowers prices during the contract period.
StorageWay • Founded — 2000
• Corporate headquarters — Fremont, California
• President and CEO — J. Kim Fennell
Publication Date: 4 April 2001/ID Number: ITNI-WW-CT-0101 Page 29 of 30
Go-to-Market Plans StorageWay provides a shared storage infrastructure to Internet data centers and their customers — both directly and through reseller arrangements. (Exodus resells StorageWay services.) The company's strategy is to provide storage utilities, which are offered as value-added services by Internet infrastructure providers as well as via direct sales to businesses with mission-critical information.
Service Offerings • OutStore and OutStore Plus — Managed storage capacity. Plus equals higher SLAs.
• OutBack and OutBack Plus — Backup, restore and archival. Plus equals faster restore.
• Professional services — Storage assessment and data migration services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies StorageWay claims substantial depth of engineering expertise in the areas of storage, data management and networking. The company has invented a patent-pending, shared utility architecture that enables enterprises to easily scale their storage infrastructure and provides improved storage management control.
WorldStor • Founded — 1999
• Corporate headquarters — Fairfax, Virginia
• President and CEO — Paul Battaglia
• Employees — 120
• Ownership — Private
• Investors — Mid Atlantic Venture Funds, Keystone Ventures, WR Huff and Five Paces
• Locations — Nine (Equinix and Exodus)
• Major strategic alliances — EMC, Exodus, Equinix and Brocade
• Web site — www.worldstor.com
Publication Date: 4 April 2001/ID Number: ITNI-WW-CT-0101 Page 30 of 30
Go-to-Market Plans WorldStor's primary focus is customers at Internet data centers. WorldStor sells through Internet data centers and to resident customers. The company's long-term goal is to interconnect data centers and is negotiating with metropolitan fiber providers. Its 2001 plans include expansion to private utility. WorldStor has primarily a U.S. focus, but its 2001 plans call for international expansion. WorldStor heavily markets its EMC architecture as a competitive advantage and highlights its "EMC Proven" status on the company Web site.
Service Offerings • On-Demand primary data storage — Standard 99.9 SLA
• On-Site tape backup — For data hosted by WorldStor as well as data residing on customer-owned and operated equipment
• Data replication — Local and off-site replication for testing, content delivery and disaster protection
• Professional services — Storage system planning, testing and integration services
Unique Capabilities and Technologies • Network operations center (NOC) in Fairfax, Virginia, and Irvine, California, for remote
management
• WorldView storage management customer portal
• Develop archival capabilities
This document is published in the following Dataquest Clusters:
IT Services Europe Network and Internet Services Worldwide
