EMC adds services to manage storage flow

EMC Corp. said Wednesday that it is extending its professional services arm with on-site support in managing the flow, usage and storage of data in the enterprise.

EMC Managed Services, offered by the company's Technology Solutions group, now include residency, managed utility and storage management services. EMC already offers residency services, in which EMC staff assist businesses on site with routine storage operations. The company has now incorporated services expertise it gained through its acquisition earlier this year of Internosis Inc., which specialized in IT strategy, application development, IT infrastructure and managed services for Microsoft environments. EMC is now offering residency services for messaging infrastructure and content management.

Under the managed utility services umbrella, EMC is also offering on-site services and pay-as-you-grow storage procurement on top of a base storage commitment.

"We could sell 100 percent pay-as-you-grow, but we don't think it's in our customers' best interest. Storage demands are growing so why pay a premium to somebody for 100 percent pay-as-you-grow when you don't need to pay the premium? We think it's best for customers to look at what their base storage requirement has been and make that commitment up front, which reduces the risk you put on EMC, which reduces the cost," said Darrell James, senior vice president of technology solutions for EMC, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.

With EMC's storage management services, geared for businesses that require multiyear, on-site management of larger storage environments with more than 100 terabytes of capacity, EMC staff are dedicated to a site and provide support based on service-level agreements.

Toyota Motorsport in Cologne, Germany, which handles the design, manufacturing and operation for the Toyota Formula 1 program, is using EMC's on-site storage management services.

"We don't need to have our own dedicated resources, and we can concentrate IT on our core business," said Thomas Schiller, general manager of IT for Toyota Motorsport GmbH.

Speed is key for the race-car manufacturer, which handles the chassis and engine design, manufacturing, wind-tunnel testing, and race and test operation for the Toyota F1 program, and which often has to make changes to cars in extremely short time frames.

"We have a development cycle of two weeks' time between races," Schiller said. "The managed service agreement driven from EMC gives us a huge amount of flexibility. You normally go for a contract with a duration of three to four years, and the binding in that contract is very solid, but EMC offers me huge flexibility to change service-level agreements according to demands changing in my business."