Gobs of Data Storage in a Snap

Learn how one company plans to build a global storage dynasty through direct sales made by service provider channel partners selling its SAN systems.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [March 8, 2001]

Your opinion on the direction of managed storage services depends on your take the markets need for creating virtual memories. Storage Area Network (SAN) firms, outsourced storage companies, and application service providers (ASPs) have all chimed in on the data storage issue. One company even says service providers could someday double the storage capacity of a full-sized data warehouse with machines that require a small, single cage—only that day is today.

Meet Jon Castleman, President of Storage Access Inc., who believes in the power of SANs when it comes to the white-hot business of providing managed data storage solutions. The company was formed to take advantage of a market that Castleman is excited about, because he thinks the managed storage services market is about to sound a sonic boom.

"In the next few years, civilization will create 12 exobytes of data, which is equivalent to all of the data created to date," Castleman said.

Storage Access was formed when Toronto-based Bolivar Goldfields merged with SAI, which had been a business unit of Champion Solutions Group—an IBM partner. Castleman said that Storage Access uses some IBM technology, but that the company is not funded by IBM.

Storage Access still maintains a business relationship with Champion, which is an important channel partner. Champion launched an IBM service dubbed "Time To Content" (TTC) aimed at delivering a variety of storage services to ISPs and to other service providers, as a result of its association with Storage Access.

Castleman said that we can expect more and more offerings like Champions to hit the managed storage market this year, because even though the cost of storage in price per megabyte is declining, the cost of administration is quickly rising—while the amount of data being stored is increasing exponentially each year.

"More disk capacity was sold in 1999 than in all previous years combined," Castleman said. "We're heading toward what I call a 'technology train wreck' where the price of administration will be so high, that even if a salesman offers companies free disk drives, they will be unable to afford to take them because they will be unable to pay the cost of administration."

Enter the FSP
Castleman said that companies want to be "Full Service Providers" but that a business can only focus on what it's good at, if it wants to be successful. The result is that service providers that want to offer a total Web package need to forge alliances. Storage Access believes that it offers one service that other service providers need to outsource.

In the storage services arena, Castleman said that Storage Access offers two key advantages. First, Storage Access offers a scalable infrastructure and second, a business strategy that ensures the company will not compete with its service provider partners.

The traditional storage architecture is just a bunch of disks (JBOD) tied to a powerful, expensive, front-end server that can cost $500,000. When a server gets filled up, a company will end up spending another $500,000 just to add the next customer, even if that customer will bring in only $20 a month in services provided.

In contrast to this business model, Storage Access' SAN technology leverages the distributed functions of hubs and switches to expand the processing power of a single storage engine tenfold.

The SAN can provide remote replication of data, which effectively consolidates ten 9GB drives into what appears to be a single 90GB drive. A SAN system can also provide all the other functions that any front-end server could allow. In addition, the SAN is easier to update and to expand. Castleman said it ends up being a "buy-as-you-need, open systems proposition."

Storage Access aggregates SANs into Storage Wide Area Networks (SWANs) which combine SAN-based and IP-based storage. The hub of a SWAN is called a Storage Network Access Point (SNAP). SNAPs lower the cost-per-gigabyte of data administration by using management tools and simplified networks to increase the number of gigabytes that each administrator can manage. Administration costs are deferred because required skill sets are reduced.

Go to page 2: Better Business Plan >