The acronym SSP was added to the popular telecom lexicon last year. But who exactly are these storage service providers?
According to Dan Tanner, a senior analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. (www.aberdeen.com), there are now at least 25 SSPs, with StorageNetworks Inc. (www.storagenetworks.com) as the clear leader. This group includes a long list of startups; ISPs such as Exodus Communications Inc. (www.exodus.net) and NaviSite Inc. (www.navisite.com); systems integrators like EDS Corp. (www.eds.com) and IBM Global Services (www.ibm.com/services); and software companies that have expanded or repositioned to become SSPs, like LiveVault Corp. (www.LiveVault.com).
Traditional telecom providers, such as the ILECs and CLECs, have yet to make a move into the SSP space, and Tanner doesn't expect them to. He believes that these companies don't have the expertise in this space. "They have enough problems just managing their own storage rather than becoming SSPs," he says.
Business models of the SSPs are greatly divergent. Tape backup, disaster recovery and total storage management are among the services various SSPs are offering.
LiveVault, previously known as software vendor Network Integrity, is focused on protecting server data located outside of major data centers. But rather than focusing on large enterprise sites, it targets small and medium-sized businesses and branches of large corporations, and sends data over medium-speed connections.
"In smaller facilities with two or three servers, a small tape library and no IT professionals and no 24/7 [personnel], it's difficult to protect data with tape at all. So LiveVault will take care of data protection in remote locations," says John Butler, president and CEO. "We provide hot backup to Iron Mountain data centers. All day long, data goes to Iron Mountain data centers over an IP connection using encryption and digital certificates. LiveVault makes it possible to do that. It provides software that does hot backup for servers over DSL up to fiber connections."
Most SSPs provide service using Fibre Channel or SAN connections to the customer, he adds, but LiveVault does it over connections such as DSL. "That entails protecting databases while they're open and changing, so you need transaction integrity so if you lose your SQL server at 4 p.m., I have your data at 4 p.m." It's able to do all that by employing a file system filter driver, which only sends the bytes being written and replicates them, Butler says.
Tanner expects SSPs to get plenty of takers due to the complexity and the cost of managing storage applications in-house.
"I would estimate that the cost of owning storage--that is, managing it--can be 10 to 20 times the cost of the storage over its lifetime because of the personnel costs," Tanner says. He adds that storage used to be less of an issue for companies, but that the Internet has made it mandatory for content to be available around the clock, "so you can't have a situation in which your processors are down and will be up in 2 days."
"Storage is the Rodney Dangerfield of data processing. It gets very little respect. But it's remarkably complex," says Tanner. "You need to centralize storage so all can access it. But to centralize it, you need to put it on a network. But that requires connecting disparate devices, and is complex. Backup is the toughest--how do you do it when multiple users have multiple files open? What if file gets corrupted? How do you let the network continue to go and files continue to be available?" Also, storage has to be handled differently whether its on Unix, NT or a Windows system, and many businesses run all three.
