Dynamic, Agile Infrastructures are Key to Picking Today's MSPs
"The broad and rich foundation of the internet will unleash a "services wave" of applications and experiences available instantly over the internet to millions of users...Services designed to scale to tens or hundreds of millions will dramatically change the nature and cost of solutions deliverable to enterprises or small businesses." - Bill Gates
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who host, manage, and monitor enterprise and SMB databases and applications have sprung up like wildflowers, and why not? A recent Forrester survey reveals that only 53% of technology users within U.S. organizations are satisfied with the internal support services they receive. Because of this, more organizations are turning to MSPs because they do not have the equipment, skills, knowledge or desire to service their own data center environments. However as more organizations look to MSPs to meet their operational needs, they need to verify that the MSPs they are evaluating to host their applications have a technology infrastructure that will deliver the functionality and services levels that they will need, at the cost desired now and into the future.
Organizations have learned that the benefits of piece of mind, simplified operations and lower TCO that MSPs can offer are too good to pass up. By taking much of the burden of application maintenance and management off of internal IT resources, organizations can focus on more strategic initiatives that will help them respond more quickly to market opportunities and grow the business.
Organizations are placing high expectations on MSPs to resolve their operational challenges and in many cases holding MSPs to higher standards then they typically hold their own IT departments. This is forcing MSPs to provide solid services that address the customer issues of today so they can scale, support and manage a massively growing customer base. Obviously some MSPs have more experience with this than others, especially at the enterprise level.
It is as MSPs grow that they need to evolve their infrastructure to match new requirements that enterprise organizations are placing upon them. In the case of MSPs, simply increasing headcount to meet these new demands may work short term but ultimately an MSP must use innovative technology to continue to scale economically and effectively. So even as explosive data growth continues to plague data centers, MSPs can multiply that problem by the number of customers they have and one can easily see part of their management challenges revolves around scaling their own storage infrastructure.
Data Intensity, an MSP in Bedford, MA is already having to dealing with these sorts of issues in regards to its storage growth. Steve King, Data Intensity's Chief Technology Officer recently said, "Planning our storage needs in advance isn't practical since we often have to add customers at short notice".
So to simplify its storage infrastructure, Data Intensity replaced its SAN fabric with two 3PAR InServ arrays that are based on 3PAR's Utility Storage offering. 3PAR beat out the competition in performance, availability, ease of management, ease of provisioning, scalability, and vendor reputation but it was 3PAR's unique approach to thin provisioning that was one of the deciding factors in Data Intensity's selection over competitors. And Data Intensity is not alone -- 8 of the 11 companies in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for North America Hosting (2008) run their utility infrastructures on 3PAR including AT&T Global Hosting, Savvis, Terremark and Verizon Business.
Since then, Data Intensity has experienced the following benefits in managing storage within its data center.
MSPs are becoming a more viable option for more organizations of all sizes, but just because MSPs can host your applications and data does not mean they are all created equal. Organizations must look beyond the marketing brochures and sales' claims to verify that MSPs have the infrastructure agility and technology know-how to keep pace with the incessant demands that organizations have for more storage and performance. So the short and long term successes of MSPs like Data Intensity will become more inextricably linked to the type of technology they use than how many people they throw at the problem. Witnessing them use 3PAR's Utility Storage is a prime example of the type of technology that organizations should look for their MSPs to be adopting so they can have the confidence that they can instantly, predictably, reliably and cost-effectively respond to their dynamic and changing needs.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who host, manage, and monitor enterprise and SMB databases and applications have sprung up like wildflowers, and why not? A recent Forrester survey reveals that only 53% of technology users within U.S. organizations are satisfied with the internal support services they receive. Because of this, more organizations are turning to MSPs because they do not have the equipment, skills, knowledge or desire to service their own data center environments. However as more organizations look to MSPs to meet their operational needs, they need to verify that the MSPs they are evaluating to host their applications have a technology infrastructure that will deliver the functionality and services levels that they will need, at the cost desired now and into the future.
Organizations have learned that the benefits of piece of mind, simplified operations and lower TCO that MSPs can offer are too good to pass up. By taking much of the burden of application maintenance and management off of internal IT resources, organizations can focus on more strategic initiatives that will help them respond more quickly to market opportunities and grow the business.
Organizations are placing high expectations on MSPs to resolve their operational challenges and in many cases holding MSPs to higher standards then they typically hold their own IT departments. This is forcing MSPs to provide solid services that address the customer issues of today so they can scale, support and manage a massively growing customer base. Obviously some MSPs have more experience with this than others, especially at the enterprise level.
It is as MSPs grow that they need to evolve their infrastructure to match new requirements that enterprise organizations are placing upon them. In the case of MSPs, simply increasing headcount to meet these new demands may work short term but ultimately an MSP must use innovative technology to continue to scale economically and effectively. So even as explosive data growth continues to plague data centers, MSPs can multiply that problem by the number of customers they have and one can easily see part of their management challenges revolves around scaling their own storage infrastructure.
Data Intensity, an MSP in Bedford, MA is already having to dealing with these sorts of issues in regards to its storage growth. Steve King, Data Intensity's Chief Technology Officer recently said, "Planning our storage needs in advance isn't practical since we often have to add customers at short notice".
So to simplify its storage infrastructure, Data Intensity replaced its SAN fabric with two 3PAR InServ arrays that are based on 3PAR's Utility Storage offering. 3PAR beat out the competition in performance, availability, ease of management, ease of provisioning, scalability, and vendor reputation but it was 3PAR's unique approach to thin provisioning that was one of the deciding factors in Data Intensity's selection over competitors. And Data Intensity is not alone -- 8 of the 11 companies in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for North America Hosting (2008) run their utility infrastructures on 3PAR including AT&T Global Hosting, Savvis, Terremark and Verizon Business.
Since then, Data Intensity has experienced the following benefits in managing storage within its data center.
- Data Intensity can add customers almost instantaneously without variations in performance and still keep costs to a minimum.
- 3PAR's built-in management capabilities have drastically reduced overall Data Intensity's complexity and effort associated with managing these storage systems.
- Its customers can aggressively and cost-effectively scale their critical business applications as Data Intensity can provide up to 200% headroom beyond current capacity needs
- Data Intensity can scale the 3PAR systems without compromising business continuity
MSPs are becoming a more viable option for more organizations of all sizes, but just because MSPs can host your applications and data does not mean they are all created equal. Organizations must look beyond the marketing brochures and sales' claims to verify that MSPs have the infrastructure agility and technology know-how to keep pace with the incessant demands that organizations have for more storage and performance. So the short and long term successes of MSPs like Data Intensity will become more inextricably linked to the type of technology they use than how many people they throw at the problem. Witnessing them use 3PAR's Utility Storage is a prime example of the type of technology that organizations should look for their MSPs to be adopting so they can have the confidence that they can instantly, predictably, reliably and cost-effectively respond to their dynamic and changing needs.
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