News

posted on 26 June 2008 08:44

ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) is back: Dell is introducing new storage services for businesses of all sizes to improve their backup arrangements, store old files on cheaper drives and, in partnership with GlassHouse Technologies, design and implement disaster recovery plans.

This is against a background of rampant data growth with Dell saying enterprises and medium-sized businesses face a 55% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in data storage requirements.

Paul Kaeley, Dell's Storage Consulting Practice Director, put it like this: “For many customers, managing their data access, protection and recovery environment has become unnecessarily difficult and the risk to the business through data loss in the event of human error or disaster is both real and material. Dell's new consulting services provide a path to simplifying customers’ storage and backup environments.”

Come to Doctor Dell and all will be well

Dell will work with customers to implement a tiered-storage infrastructure where less critical data can be moved to the appropriate tier helping to drive down costs for the business. It will identify improvements within backup and recovery infrastructure and help customers to stabilize and optimize operations, and, in partnership with GlassHouse Technologies, will plan, design and implement disaster recovery to help protect and recover data and restore IT operations in event of crisis.

No license to print consultancy money

Dell is concerned to reassure people that it isn't transferring cost from storage to its consultants' pockets, citing a senior Forrester analyst, Stephanie Balaouras: “There’s an appetite for storage services, but companies are weary of long engagements that last for six months and the end result is a PowerPoint with a bunch of meaningless platitudes. What I like about [Dell’s services] is that there is an emphasis on consulting engagements that are short in duration and the recommendations are useful and actionable.”

Tiered Storage, Data Disaster Recovery and Backup Restore Optimization and Stabilization services are now available worldwide, except in Latin America. IT Disaster Recovery, Enterprise Backup and Restore Assessments and Managed Backup, Remote Backup Monitoring and Remote Backup Reporting services are available to customers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada and will be available to customers in the rest of Europe and Asia later this year.

Storage Consulting services are available directly from Dell and through Dell’s Partner Direct program.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}