Storage utilities make case for pay-as-you-go service - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Communications News, August, 2000 by Morris Edwards

Dot-com companies take the lead.

Storage as a "service" is the latest approach that organizations are considering to cope with the management challenge posed by data storage. The objective is to avoid the cost and complexity of building and managing a dedicated storage system--and scaling it to accommodate explosive growth in demand--by buying the amount of storage needed from a storage service provider (SSP) on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Dot-com companies are leading candidates for this type of storage service since they must ramp up vast amounts of storage quickly, manage rapid and unpredictable growth in storage demand, and still provide prompt, 24x7 access to the data with effective backup and restore capabilities. Given the shortage of skilled storage professionals, and the need for dot-com companies to be extremely efficient in their IT purchases and implementations, the storage utility concept makes a great deal of sense.

For older, more established enterprises, the business case for storage services is less clean Unlike the dot-com startups, the average Fortune 1000 company will typically have invested heavily in storage systems and will have the staff, facility and network infrastructure in place to cope with anticipated demand. In addition, most will be reluctant to entrust the company's most valuable asset--its data--to someone else, possibly in a distant location.

For these reasons, the majority of established companies will probably contract with an SSP initially for such auxiliary services as disaster recovery or for backup or data archiving. Others may venture into outsourcing by using an application service provider (ASP) to handle some of their application needs. In either case, the outsourcing experience could lay the groundwork of familiarity and trust that SSPs will need to expand their customer base beyond dot.com companies.

With storage requirements doubling each year for Fortune 1000 firms--and each quarter for dot-com companies--IDC believes more and more organizations will soon be turning to SSPs for part, if not all, of their storage needs. Over the next four years, IDC sees storage utility services as the fastest-growing segment of the storage market, expanding at an average compound rate of nearly 375% to reach $5.5 billion in sales worldwide by 2003.

GAIN WITHOUT PAIN?

As a concept, the storage utility model is an evolutionary extension of the move from direct-attached to network-attached storage (NAS) and to storage area networks (SANs), as well as combinations of NAS and SANs. Network-attached storage has emerged as a cost-effective solution for read-intensive applications, such as media streaming and Web casting, front-ended by multiple servers. NAS is also an effective tool for caching high-volume, static content. SANs are preferred for applications involving large databases or where business requirements change quickly.

SANs offer a number of operational benefits. They maximize storage capacity usage and efficiency, scale well and promote high availability by modularizing storage and channel resources that can be isolated if a failure occurs. In addition, reconfigurations to adapt to new applications or business challenges are simpler since SANs support logical, rather than physical, data movement. The SAN environment is also readily adaptable to new products and technologies as they become available.

However, SAN implementations are difficult and require a high degree of technical competency, which is in short supply. Without adequate professional support, organizations may be reluctant to implement yet another major infrastructure. By tapping the resources of an SSP, however, organizations can enjoy the SAN operational benefits without having to deal with implementation delays and expense and the technical headaches involved.

Like an electric utility, the SSP typically provides 24x7 service availability with virtually unlimited capacity and performance and security guarantees. The SSP's fully integrated infrastructure allows scaling and reconfiguration without service disruption, and provides the links for controlling operations and monitoring usage and performance.

Assigning end-to-end storage responsibilities to an SSP not only increases availability while lowering operation costs, it also shortens the "time-to-market" for new applications dependent on the stored data, which is becoming the key business driver for a growing number of companies. Freed from the chore of managing storage, the enterprise can focus on its core business.

SSP PIONEER

StorageNetworks, Inc. has pioneered the SSP model since its founding in late 1998. The Waltham, MA-based company is currently building a series of interconnected storage point-of-presence data centers (S-POPs) in major U.S. and European metropolitan areas to provide customers with fast and secure access to a roster of storage services.

It already has S-POPs in Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, and plans to have four more by year's end. London is the site of its first international S-POP, with others to follow in Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney are also on this year's schedule.