Storage Solutions

If you want to:

• What is storage consolidation?
• Enterprise data infrastructure - data consolidationsolution
• SoftStor - software consolidated storage solution
• Mass data exploitation
• Fast deployment datastore

What is storage consolidation?

Storage consolidation is a term describing the activity of centralising and/or reducing the number of storage subsystems to achieve business benefits. It results in reduced cost of ownership and increased service availability in the deployment of storage capacity to systems as requirements change over time.

We offer a full range of products and services that ensure the consolidation exercise satisfies your overall business objectives, starting with the initial feasibility and design studies to identify the best solution for you.

Enterprise data infrastructure - data consolidation solution

Problem:

• Are your distributed systems leading to higher management costs
• Is there a lack of coherent standards leading to confusion
• Is the time allowed for back-ups reducing High cost of ownership of disparate disc systems

If you're looking to reduce costs and/or regain control of distributed systems, we can support server consolidation with our enterprise data consolidation solution. This incorporates simplified storage management from a single management point, enterprise-wide, consolidated storage infrastructure, multi-host, multi-operating system connectivity and secure, cost-effective and automated backup and restore.

The benefits can include reduced TCO, 99.999% availability, business continuance, improved SLAs, faster application development and reduced "Time To Implement".

SoftStor - software consolidated storage solution

Problem:

• Do you have a large number of application servers?
• The budget to carry through a technology refresh does not exist?
• Do you want the operational and business benefits of storage consolidation?
• Need a way to improve the current investment?
• Do you want to be restricted to a specific storage vendor as the network grows?

If you want some (or all) of the benefits of an Enterprise data infrastructure, such as SANS and consolidation, but are limited by budget and existing investment, then we can help with our software consolidated storage solution. This will deliver simplified storage management, built on a client's existing investment in disc storage, and uses disc products from a range of suppliers, enabling buying choice for future upgrades.

This will provide managed storage without the wholesale cost of hardware replacement, giving much reduced total cost of ownership and increased customer choice - ideal for some of our smaller customers such as District Councils in Local Government.

Mass data exploitation

Problem:

• e-Business with storage capacity growing far beyond the economic cost of keeping all of the data, may have to throw it away. You need an economic way to keep all data, eg. clickstream data to understand transaction context - and customers better.
• A customer services organisation deploying service delivery via call centers, has various products within its portfolio, and customer transaction histories. These are held in a relational database but the cost of holding more than three months data online is prohibitive. They need an economic way to present all data held on disc and nearline storage in timescales appropriate for a call centre sales operation.

If you need to store, retrieve and use multi-Terabyte to even Petabyte datastores this solution meets all nearline requirements of the enterprise for multi-host, cross operating system environments, supporting the leading RDBs with 25 sec access to any item of information.

This is especially relevant where there is a lot of data involved, but low-frequency retrieval - applications like image, Exchange messaging, call arbitration, fraud, statutory needs, CRM, telephone sales and support centres. The use of nearline storage reduces infrastructure costs, enables new application areas and supports knowledge & value creation.

Fast deployment datastore

Problem:

• Do you have a large number of workstations & servers?
• Are your costs hidden, out of control?
• Is your capacity in the wrong place?
• Do you want to get into e-Business?
• Do you have to support lots of interactions?
• Do you need to manage relatively slowly changing data (web sites)?

If you want a quick (but not necessarily dirty) solution improving your storage management, then a network attached point storage solution for multi-host open systems file support to many servers could be the answer.

This will support lots of servers, typically in a departmental environment, providing Web storage and local user drives in the NT world. The applications are quick and easy to deploy, maintain and upgrade. This ensures early business benefit and manageable growth.