StorageNetworks announces LOB opening, Fujitsu win

(Telephony) StorageNetworks has established a new service line-of-business (LOB)--STORfusion--to enable telecommunications companies and computing, network and infrastructure-based service providers to enter the data-management services market. At the same time, the company announced Fujitsu as its first customer.

STORfusion is “all about enabling major telecommunications service providers and other service providers to offer storage-management services downstream to their customers” as a value-add, said Susan Frankle, StorageNetworks senior corporate marketing director. “There’s a good synergy there between the data services that we provide and offer to our customers and what large telcos and large service providers are trying to do in terms of their business.”

Fujitsu will use STORfusion in its Tokyo hosting center. StorageNetworks will provide storage management software, 24x7 global monitoring and management from its operations center in Waltham, Mass., and training, Frankle said.

StorageNetworks’ storage points of presence (S-POPs) are the ingredient around which STORfusion is built, said Frankle.

“We’re enabling partners to build these S-POP data centers and, as part of that data center, we’ll show them what technologies they can support, how to build out the infrastructure and install our S-POP managers so we can do the ongoing monitoring,” she said.

It is a way to take the responsibility off the backs – and the books – of the service providers, Frankle says.

“When we were talking to Fujitsu, they were wondering ‘Do we build this on our own (or) work with a hardware provider to get up and running on this?’” Frankle said. “The conclusion they came to was they need to have a multivendor infrastructure, and we’re the only company that could provide that to them.”

Frankle emphasized that the STORfusion initiative is “about offering management on capacity that may already be there. Data use is growing. It’s very challenging to manage an environment.”

Customers are “looking for more efficient ways to manage their capacities, and that’s what these services are all about,” she said.