Business News Holding

Tag: virtual

  • Iron Mountain Unveils First UK Cloud-Based File Archiving Customer


    Iron Mountain Digital has announced that it has signed its first European customer for its recently launched Virtual File Store service.

    The provider of STorage-as-a-Service (STaaS) for backup and archiving’s Virtual File Store solution is an enterprise-class cloud-based data archiving service designed to help companies reduce the costs of storing and managing inactive data.

    Iain Douglas, IT director at multinational IT security company Integralis, said they chose Virtual File Store due to its proven ability to achieve efficiencies for businesses.

    "Integralis has experienced exponential growth in internal data generation and is currently storing 3.5 terabytes of data on its system," he said.

    "We have worked with Iron Mountain Digital over the past two years to help us manage this growth, and solutions such as Iron Mountain’s automated, online LiveVault server backup solution have helped us to ensure that more control and flexibility of access to data has been achieved for our IT department."

    Douglas said that by piloting, and now taking on the Virtual File Store service, they had not only been able to maintain the high levels of flexibility and accessibility to theirs data but also to make cost efficiencies as inactive data can now be stored in the cloud.

    "This service complements our mixture of server and tape based backup perfectly and has allowed us to gain a lot more control over our information," he said.

    Integralis currently uses the Virtual File Store solution to store inactive data and Iron Mountain’s LiveVault server backup and recovery solution to protect its active operational data.

    With the Virtual File Store service in place, Integralis anticipate a 30 per cent reduction in storage spend in the future.

    In particular, the company has found that specifically by combining LiveVault and Virtual File Storage services, significant cost efficiencies can be made to the business.

    "We use three other services from Iron Mountain Digital and now with the addition of Virtual File Store, it’s the missing link in their portfolio," said Douglas.

    Integralis currently combines Iron Mountain Digital’s Connected Backup for PC, Connected Backup for Server and LiveVault server backup and recovery solution for protecting and managing its information.

    Richard Ellis, manager of the UK & Ireland’s direct and channel business at Iron Mountain Digital said: "We are delighted to announce Integralis as our first European customer to use the Virtual File Store service.

    "After an audit, Integralis had 20 percent of its records marked as ‘inactive’ which was a huge area where cost savings could be made.

    "The Virtual File Store solution allows Integralis to store vital, yet inactive records safely and still have on-demand access to them whilst reducing costs."

  • Storage-as-a-service Market Rife With Opportunity


    Storage-as-a-service is more than just a viable alternative, according to two new IDC multi-client studies.

    An IDC survey of 812 firms reveals that demand for online storage services is very strong in small, mid-size, and large firms that are facing budgetary and IT staffing pressures.

    These companies are evaluating online services for backup/disaster recovery, long-term record retention, business continuity, and availability.

    On the consumer front, the storage-as-a-service opportunity is exploding as individuals need to store fast growing volumes of digital data.

    They are increasingly considering online services, as an alternative to a product purchase, for backing up, sharing, and preserving data long term.

    In both the commercial and consumer segments, the availability of storage-as-a-service is disrupting traditional storage software markets as it changes how individuals and firms access storage capacity and procure software functions.

    But, more importantly, storage-as-a-service is a precursor to the longer term cloud storage and cloud computing opportunity, IDC reveals.

    Brad Nisbet, program manager for Storage and Data Management Services at IDC, said that as consumers and business organizations continue to generate vast amounts of data and seek optimum methods to store and protect them, the growth of storage capacities delivered through storage-as-a-service offerings will outpace traditional storage architectures.

    "With storage-as-a-service capacity growing over 65 per cent from 174 petabytes in 2007 to over 2.1 exabytes in 2012, the market is rife with opportunity," he said.

    Laura DuBois, program director for Storage Software at IDC, said that today, in the commercial context, online backup and archiving services are the immediate manifestation of the longer term opportunity for a series of cloud-based services which will impact the storage industry.

    "Storage-as-a-service will take place in two phases: first as a way to enable protection, recovery, long-term retention, and business continuity, and second as a by-product of larger cloud computing initiatives," she said.

    Among the key survey results on the commercial side are:

    • Suppliers that offer a breadth of services to satisfy a range of use cases for storage-as-a-service will be a step ahead.
    • Storage-as-a-service is of interest as a lower cost alternative to on-premise solutions and secondarily in support of limited IT staff.
    • Firms show a preference for suppliers whose focus is on online services and for those that have a strong technical background.

    Among the key survey findings on the consumer side are:

    • Suppliers that understand the differences between the large population of consumers merely aware of online backup and those considering it will be at an advantage.
    • Motivators for early adoption of online backup have been for recovery, but individuals currently evaluating are motivated by anywhere files accessibility.
    • Consumers indicated a clear preference to get an online backup service from a dedicated online backup company, rather than from an IT supplier, phone company, or the like.

  • IBM Expands Storage Virtualization for SMBs


    IBM is to introduce a cheaper and less powerful version of it storage virtualization software for use by small and medium sized (SMB) businesses.

    The System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software is designed to help improve storage utilization rates, energy efficiency, administrator productivity, availability, and scalability of critical applications.

    It is intended to significantly improve the flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructures by creating consolidated, virtual pools of information.

    This is seen as a key issue for SMBs with exploding volumes of data that are looking to control costs while also responding to the changing business environment.

    Barry Rudolph, vice president, IBM System Storage, said the company had been the leader in storage virtualization since SVC was introduced five years ago.

    “By incorporating a more accessible and affordable product through our IBM Business Partners we are giving clients what they have been asking for – a way to incorporate green and efficient technologies into their information infrastructures to manage the data center crisis of today."

    SVC Entry Edition is planned to be generally available on November 21.