The recently forged business continuity alliance led by eSD, and in conjunction with DataPro and E.S.S. came to fruition this morning with the launch of their SSP model at the Park Hyatt in Rosebank.
With storage being the biggest current growth component of the IT market, the launch drew wide interest from a cross section of SA industry, banking and retail operations.
"The SSP has traditionally been an extension of the ISP and ASP model", stated Paul Muller of eSD, however this extension has not necessarily worked and we have learnt from this by creating a unique partnership with specialists in their field".
The technology behind the model is the Ubiquistore product of Enterprise Storage Solutions, which was demonstrated to the audience in a simulated live situation.
Gareth Donald of ESS emphasised the fact that this product was hardware platform independent, can back up open file systems and is very secure over a network or the Internet.
"This allows us to service any combination of platforms from centralised management console and allocate storage volumes - easily and effectively."
Douglas Reed, MD of DataPro predicted that outsourced solutions were in their infancy in South Africa and that companies need to place the stress on their core competencies.
"In our case we cannot be everything to everyone, storage is a specialised industry and we are partnering with the experts."
Reed stated that he believed he was dealing with a world-class solution that would complement DataPro`s planned move into the market that has been accelerated with the recent purchase of BTG Net.
The SSP solution, to be marketed by eSD, will have two offerings; Capacity on Demand which will allow clients to buy additional disk with no capital outlay, and Multi Tiered Storage for off site mirroring and replication.
Both offerings will have additional add-ons such as redundancy and backup. The cost, dependant on the options selected, will be start at around R200-00 per managed gigabyte.
Muller in wrapping up stated," we are technically selling insurance for your company. With the data explosion and greater reliance on automation the value of data has been dramatically enhanced. Lose that and lose the business"
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