U.S. storage services specialist StorageNetworks yesterday announced that its customers would be able to keep an eye on and manage their storage resources via a secure Web portal.
Known as Virtual Storage Portal (VSP), the Web-based software gives StorageNetworks customers access to their storage resources that are situated at the company's storage points of presence (S-POP) data centers, Bill Miller, StorageNetworks co-founder, executive vice president and chief technology officer, said in an interview with IDG News Service.
Password-protected VSP offers users a single graphical user interface to view summarized information concerning the availability, utilization and performance of their storage services, accessible in recent and long-term views, StorageNetworks said. VSP includes an audit log tracking all log-in/log-out activity and administrator-level privileges.
Miller explains that the software offers different levels of access. With the manager view, users can only see the data, not change it, whereas with the administrator's view, accessed by a secure ID card, storage administrators can alter the information, he says.
"We have no plans to sell the software [commercially] to anyone," Miller said. "You subscribe to StorageNetworks, you get the software." The company, which describes itself as a storage services provider, developed VSP internally over a 12-month period with a 35-person development team. Within three years, StorageNetworks intends to advance the software to the point where users can deploy policy-based management, allowing them to set policies so that storage can be automatically deployed should the need arise, Miller says.
TechTarget.com from Dedham, Mass., has beta tested VSP. The Internet start-up is busy establishing a portfolio of IT-specific portals and communities, and expects to triple its current 1T byte of stored data to about 3T bytes by year-end, according to TechTarget.com's CEO Greg Strakosch.
"VSP has a very clean and simple interface. It gives a nice snapshot of what's going on with the system," Strakosch said in a phone interview. "One of the worries IT guys have when you outsource your storage is whether you're giving up control, VSP allows them to have that control."
VSP is available now for the majority of StorageNetworks' DataPACS - primary data storage on-demand - and SafePACS - real-time data replication - storage services, the company said. In the future, VSP will allow BackPACS - back-up and restore service - customers to review high-level back-up trend reports and allow DataPACS customers to allocate additional storage on demand.
StorageNetworks currently has over 100 customers, three-quarters of whom are emerging dot-com, or Internet start-up operations, such as community building Web site eCircles.com and Internet photo company Ofoto, Miller says. "They have a problem that we're an easy solution for storage. They don't have the staff and the infrastructure; it's a natural fit."
The storage company already has 11 S-POPs in the U.S. and its first international S-POP in London, with more to follow in Frankfurt and Amsterdam, and then four in Asia - Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo - to be set up in the second quarter of this year, Miller says. The S-POPs are located at the sites of StorageNetworks' Internet hosting partners - Global Crossing Ltd.'s GlobalCenter and AT&T's hosting facilities. The company will also be partnering with Exodus Communications by the end of this month, Miller adds.
StorageNetworks' ultimate aim is to build a worldwide dedicated storage network, its Global Data Storage Network, which will hook up the S-POPs via fiber-optic cable to enterprise customer locations.
The storage specialist also announced its StoragePort Access Channel, which is aimed at allowing StorageNetworks partners who are hosting service providers, application service providers or ISPs to offer their customers plug-in access to almost unlimited storage capacity. The idea is to make connecting to storage resources as simple as hooking up to the electricity or phone service, Miller says.
StorageNetworks, in Waltham, Mass., can be reached at www.storagenetworks.com/.
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StorageNetworks.
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Network World, 09/13/99.
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