News

Ford storage czar sees provisioning gains

• By Jack Vaughan
• May 16, 2002

[MAY 16, 2002] - StorageNetworks continued its push into storage management software sales with the introduction of its STORos v5.0 platform, said to more efficiently utilize expensive storage resources. Providing policy-based operations and SLA support, STORos StorageManager can handle SAN, NAS, DAS and backup management tasks. A beta user at Ford Motor Co. noted benefits in the StorageNetworks' solution.

"We want to drive up utilization and drive down costs," said Al McPhee, manager of Ford's Storage Enterprise Group, who oversees more than 320 Tbytes of storage capacity. He said provisioning processes supported by STORos StorageManager are key to such efforts. "Chaos costs money," said McPhee, "process can reduce expenditures."

The need to measure ROI and IT performance is very sharp today, added Peter Bell, StorageNetworks founder, chairman and CEO. He gauged StorageNetworks' competition to comprise systems framework vendors such as Computer Associates and BMC; software companies, including Veritas and "a host of start-ups"; and hardware vendors such as EMC, Hitachi and Sun. The later, claimed Bell, still propose that customers "buy more boxes."

StorageNetworks began life as an application service provider. It still offers management and consulting services, but is shifting gears to focus on its own software. The company notes that this is a time when IT budgets are being slashed, but sees opportunity as cutting storage costs gains greater attention.