Missed this one on data centers......
Storage Vendors Add Capacity To Services
Mitch Wagner
Pretty soon, if you want to visit your data, you're going to have to get in a car and drive.
Vendors are rolling out services and products that take advantage of the Internet and high-speed WAN technologies to let users outsource storage to data centers located miles from the servers that use the storage.
IT managers are finding more services initially designed for backup and disaster recovery that let them outsource their primary online data. And more offerings are on the way.
For example, Network Integrity and Imation plan to roll out in February a service for Internet-based backup of servers to data centers run by Imation.
The service is designed for large companies' remote offices with no IT staff, and for small and medium-sized businesses. It is based on LiveVault software from Network Integrity. The software can back up servers without needing to take them down and it can work on files that are still open, backing up only changed bytes, not entire files. The service, which will be offered by Internet service providers and telecommunications carriers, can work over Internet connections of any speed, and can back up a 200 GB server over a DSL connection. Imation will initially dedicate 10 terabytes of storage in its data center to back up data from the service, and will procure additional storage as demand requires.
The opportunity to outsource storage to an offsite location promises certain benefits, said Ralph Fusco, manager of technical services for corporate information systems at clothing retailer Liz Claiborne. "It's a simple outsourcing algorithm, where you have someone else minding a piece of the pie," he said. The business model could save IT managers time and personnel. But those benefits don't outweigh the downside as far as Fusco is concerned.
"You lose control," he said. "I need to be sure I can recover my data, and I need the flexibility to keep it in my data center now."
Those concerns aside, many companies will be receptive to outsourcing backup over the Internet, but will be more reluctant to trust business-critical online data to an outsource company, because there's more at stake with the data needed to run day-to-day business, said Dennis Wade, an analyst for Peripheral Research.
StorageTek and Level 3 Communications plan to tackle the bigger job of getting companies to trust outsourcing of online data. StorageTek plans to locate storage in Level 3's co-location data centers. The service is now available in San Francisco, and will be installed in New York, Denver, Dallas and Seattle by year's end, with a London data center to receive storage in the first quarter of 2000.
Pricing will start at one cent per megabyte and will depend on capacity used, the amount of time the user has available to perform a backup, whether the user wants guaranteed restore times and support packages.
Everone wants to be in the ASP biz......
techweb.com
Micron To Roll Out ASP Services
(10/19/99, 12:11 p.m. ET)
By Ellis Booker, InternetWeek
Direct PC maker Micron Electronics on Tuesday announced it will invest more than $210 million next year to build out an application service provider (ASP) infrastructure, offering customers e-commerce, hosting, managed desktop and server hardware, and Internet access.
The company already said it has 45,000 users of its e-commerce, hosting, and connectivity services. The new offerings -- mapping to the strategy of other ASPs -- will be billed under a monthly/per user subscription. The services are aimed at organizations with fewer than 2,500 employees, and will be handled under a consolidated monthly bill. Customers will be able to modify their choices monthly.
"Customers will be able to 'dial-up' or 'dial-down' computing capabilities as needed," said Michael Gale, chief Web officer at Micron, which is now going under the brand and business name micronpc.com.
For Internet access, micronpc.com will use DSL circuits, which Gale said could be provisioned to customers within 20 days now, and under 10 days by the end of next year.
The e-commerce service, HostPro, is based on micronpc's version of the OpenMarket server, and offers both front-office applications, such as e-commerce templates, shopping carts, and credit authorization, as well as back-end applications, such as customer tracking and inventory control. Micronpc.com acquired HostPro, a Web and applications hosting provider, last quarter.
Micronpc.com will offer remote management of PC desktops, starting at $45 per user per month, and a thin server appliance, called NetNow, an Intel 433-MHz processor running SCO Unix. There are two configurations: NetNow Connect includes the appliance plus e-mail, Web hosting, DSL connectivity, Internet access, and technical support; NetNow Commerce adds e-commerce tools.
"They're wrapping all the components, especially the e-commerce pieces, into one package," said Greg Runyan, an analyst at The Yankee Group. "Simply hosting back-office apps is not enough. ASPs need to have e-commerce facilities."
Micronpc.com can play off its own PC and server hardware platforms, and gain economies of scale this way, said Kevin Knox, research Director at GartnerGroup. But he said Micronpc.com does not have an end user sales or IT strategy arm, and so will have to rely on resellers for these functions.
Separately, Micronpc.com is readying the rollout of the hosted versions of Microsoft's Office applications. It is already among the first hosting companies to commercially offer Microsoft BackOffice products, such as SQL Server and Exchange.
Front-office applications, delivered over a DSL connection, are "very close to the performance cross-point" with locally run applications, Gale said.
Next year, Micronpc.com will round out its ASP offerings with VoIP and VPN services, according to Gale.
Go over the updated attendance list for the Nov. show here......
fibreconference.com
New info teasers on Infostor site.....IF you get this mag please scan it for pearls for the rest of us who don't...
www2.infostor.com
Something you can read.....
www2.infostor.com
Going beyond video applications, a variety of companies are building Fibre Channel storage area networks for a wide range of applications and reasons.
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However, as at the Polk Company, clustering is increasingly becoming a driving force behind SAN deployment. That's the case at New South Communications, a telecommunications and ISP provider in Greenville, SC.
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. "With clusters, it's hard to scale SCSI. Fibre Channel provides a much cleaner implementation." Briscoe says its decision to implement a SAN "had nothing to do with speed, capacity, or connection distances."
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video is still the primary application benefiting from the technology. For example, Western Heights School District, in Oklahoma City, is using its new Fibre Channel SAN to deliver on-line video instruction to students' PCs, both in the classroom and at home. The system combines high-quality MPEG video presentations and text and graphics to teach complete courses anywhere across the school district's 12 campuses.
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very interesting read on..... The up-front work done by the US Government Patent and Trade Office (PTO) provides valuable insight into some of the issues that have to be addressed..The PTO stores about 40TB of patent-related text and image data, all of which must be available on-line to patent examiners, attorneys, and others.....about a year ago the PTO tapped the expertise of Litton PRC, a large systems integration firm in McLean, VA, to do some initial feasibility testing. PRC is the Systems Integrator Technical Assistance (SITA) contractor for PTO, responsible for helping guide its direction in new technology implementation..(Litton will be at the Nov FCTC conference)
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