vitsejä, logikkaa
Osama Bin Laden phoned President George W. Bush. "I had a dream about the United States," he said. I could see the whole country, and over every building and home was a banner," said Bin Laden.
"What was on the banner?" asked Mr. Bush.
"LONG LIVE OSAMA!" answered the terrorist.
"I am so glad that you called," said President Bush, because I too had a dream. In my dream, I saw Afghanistan and it was more beautiful than ever; totally rebuilt, and over every building and home was a big, beautiful banner."
"What did the banner say?" asked Osama.
"I don't know," answered President Bush, "I can't read Hebrew."
_*_
News Flash:
The President has asked that we unite for a common cause.
Since the hard-line Islamic people cannot tolerate nudity, and consider it a sin to see a naked woman who is not their wife, tonight at 7:00, all women should run out of their house naked to help weed out the terrorists.
The United States appreciates your efforts, and applauds you. United We Stand!
_*-
SSPs Hurting, But Outsourced Storage Model Still Strong
4:43 PM EST Wed., June 27, 2001
Storability Scores $30 Million In Latest VC Round
SSP StorageWay Picks Up $42M In Big VC Win
SSP Market To Grow, But Not As Fast As Predicted
WAITING FOR ITS TURN IN SPOTLIGHT -- LogicStream says ready, set, action
When CTC needed to add storage services, it turned to Storability
Breaking News
Hitachi Licences HP Microcode For Arrays Sold To Sun And Channel
Lawmakers Propose Faster Technology Depreciation
Microsoft Starting To Push New Office For Apple
New Vendors Sign On For Pocket PC 2002
Intel Heartened By Enthusiasm for Training During Tough Times
Microsoft Unveils Pocket PC 2002
IBM, Invensys Worldwide Alliance To Deliver E-Business Solutions
Infinium Drops ASP Business
Despite a couple of recent significant funding wins, many storage service providers (SSPs), which rose last year in a cloud of hype, are still struggling to last long enough to enjoy success.
Indeed, while several have recently fallen by the wayside, the survivors face a leaner market than they once expected.
According to a report released by Gartner Dataquest this month, the SSP market is expected to reach a total of $6.1 billion in 2004, up from $176 million last year.
However, that forecast is 25 percent lower than predicted last year, thanks to a cutback in venture capital, increased competition leading to falling prices for managing storage, a slumping economy and the wholesale slaughter of dot-com companies, which were once expected to be among the most likely SSP clients.
The service provider model was not a bad idea, says Dub Dublin, vice president and general manager of Conservor, an Austin, Texas-based SSP which was formed from storage solution provider Pinnacle Computer Solutions, Sugar Land, Texas. "But a lot of guys rushed into it," he says. "I think we're seeing wave two of stupid companies going under. We saw a lot of dot-coms go under. Now we're seeing the service providers fall."
"There will be a shakeout, like in the ASP and MSP space," says Jeff Butkovsky, vice president of managed storage services at AccessColo, a Morristown, N.J. -based hosting center. AccessColo is now in the process of rolling out its own storage utility offering aimed mainly at carriers who want to provide such services to their customers.
Butkovsky knows about shakeouts. He was previously director of sales at LogicStream, an Exton, Pa.-based SSP that closed in October due to a lack of financing.
LogicStream employees knew about a month in advance that financing was not forthcoming, and were able to disperse their handful of clients to other hosted data centers, says Butkovsky.
CreekPath Systems, a Boulder, Colo.-based storage software developer, which until early this year also had an SSP offering, found it was making money on software and losing it on storage services, says Greg Mangold, vice president of sales and marketing.
CreekPath, a spin-off of tape drive manufacturer Exabyte, expected to raise $80 million to $100 million to fund the development of storage infrastructures in multiple hosting centers, but in the end only raised about $21 million, Mangold says.
As a result, CreekPath is focusing on offering SSP-type software to other service providers who wish to make storage one of their offerings, says Mangold. Customers were passed to other SSPs and an Internet data center. "SSPs are going to get bought up or put out of business by global service providers," he says.
StorageProvider, Austin, Texas, last month ceased operations. The company went through two rounds of layoffs this year, according to a former employee. "We knew there was a struggle," the former employee says.
Other SSPs are also feeling the pain. ManagedStorage International, a Winchester, Colo.-based spin-off of StorageTek, is looking to get rid of its storage points of presence and focus on providing the technology to enable Internet data centers or telcos to provide storage as a service, say company officials.
Others are faring better. StorageNetworks officials say that SSP has enough cash on hand to last until profitability.
Storability this week closed it B-round of venture capital funding, adding $30 million to its war chest. The Marlborough, Mass.-based SSP is expected to be cash-flow positive by year-end, company officials say.
StorageWay, Fremont, Calif., last week secured $42 million in its C-round of funding, bringing its total funding to $98 million. Company officials expect this to be its last round of funding, and for the company to be cash-flow positive late next year.
Conservor does not own its own storage infrastructure but instead manages that of its clients, and as a result has no debt, says Dublin. Even so, business is slow. "We picked a heck of a time to do this," he says. "I don't know if what we see is a result of the dot-com business or our model."
While SSPs such as Storability and Conservor manage clients' own on-site storage, others such as StorageNetworks and Storage Access, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based SSP formed from storage solution provider Champion Computers, are moving in that direction.
"Both we and StorageNetworks are working on this model, but it will take time to evolve," says Paul Sachse, CTO of Storage Access. "It's taking more time than we thought."
It is important to offer a variety of services in a variety of ways in order to deliver what users want in terms of storage, says Sachse. "A lot of SSPs have not developed a wide breadth of offerings, or stuck it out," he says |
