IBM Storage for MSPs

When we talk about Managed Services we largely think of three main areas...

1) Infrastructure as a Service where a client outsources basic compute platforms (servers, storage, network infrastructure) to an external provider along with basic management of the compute platforms.

2) Platform as a Service adds operating systems, run-time environments, and development tools to Infrastructure as a Service capabilities, still delivered to clients on a per user, per month rental arrangement.

3) And finally Software as a Service which provides a hosted application delivery model that distributes application software to users on a subscription basis.

The first two of these managed services require the service provider to deploy hardware infrastructure… and this investment is one of the most critical and scrutinised stages of any managed service deployment, you need to pick the right hardware to support the workloads that will be placed upon it, it needs to be cost efficient and most importantly it needs to be able to scale in line with demand, and this demand is largely dictated by your customer.

Traditionally the deployment of Hardware was decided based upon a few factors, current and projected capacity requirement to ensure a little bit of wiggle room for growth, then going back to scalability factors, the capacity demands need to be met with additional infrastructure purchases at the right time to ensure you can meet your customers’ demands.

The headroom and scalability factors typically came with a projected cost, when you include headroom you pay for more kit than you need at the point of deployment, when you upgrade hardware or increase capacity you have to engage procurement and schedule potential downtime for engineering installations.

To get round some of these issues vendors started to offer ‘Capacity on Demand’ models which meant that you purchase the kit you need today but deploy more headroom to support growth demands later down the line, as you burst into the headroom capacity you are then required to pay for it.

This is all very good, but what your capacity needs and future demands are far less certain, what if a ‘Cloud like’ pricing model that could scale up and down directly in line with the demands put on your managed service by your clients. What if you could purchase all the hardware you need right now at day one but deploy all the hardware you need for headroom and growth in the future without paying for it until you use it and then stop paying for it when you don’t use it, just like the cloud. If you like the sound of that it gets better. If your head room capacity is never utilised for whatever reason, after the 3 or 5 year contract term is up all the deployed capacity is 100% yours to keep, no catch.

Because Storage requirements can vary greatly in a managed service IBM’s Storage Utility Offering (SUO) is designed to take the uncertainty and risk out of the equation when deploying IBM Storage in managed service environment.

If you want to know more about this or any other IBM offering designed to simplify infrastructure deployment in a managed service, contact me or one of the IBM team at Tech Data.