Analyzing Storage Needs

The goal of the Networked Storage Advisor program is to reduce the time and expense needed to analyze customers' existing storage assets and determine the optimum amount of new hardware and services they need, said Raymond Fischer, senior vice president of networked storage services at the distributor.

Hall-Mark is taking the StorageAlert software application from Trellisoft, which about a month ago was acquired by IBM and integrated into Tivoli Storage Resource Manager, and renting it to solution providers for about $3,000 per week, said Fischer.

Included is a ruggedized Windows NT server, which connects to a customer SAN with a capacity of up to 5 Tbytes and generates a report about the implementation within a few days, Fischer said. Without the tool, this process might take two to four weeks, he said.

Fred Cannataro, president of solution provider Lewan and Associates, Denver, said Networked Storage Advisor is the right tool for assessing clients' SANs. While other software might cost $30,000 per year, Cannataro said he expects a typical assessment with Networked Storage Advisor to cost between $6,000 and $8,000.

"We have excellent engineers," Cannataro said. "But the cost to have an engineer on-site for three to four weeks is prohibitive. Customers don't want to pay that expense. If that happens, we miss out on a potential storage opportunity, and customers miss out on a highly detailed scientific analysis of their environment."

Pat Sherman, co-owner and vice president of sales at eServ, a Peoria, Ill.-based solution provider, said the assessment service can help customers learn that they may need less new hardware than vendors advise.

"Vendors who respond to requests for quotes may come in and say the customer needs 10 Tbytes of new capacity," Sherman said. "We come in with the assessment and find orphan data, unused files and excess capacity, and can maybe recover 2 [Tbytes to 4 Tbytes. So we can quote 6 [Tbytes to 8 Tbytes, not 10 Tbytes," he said. "If we can sell a customer 6 Tbytes when everybody else wants to sell him 10 Tbytes, we get a customer for life."