COPAN Launch Consulting Service

COPAN Systems announced the launch of a new consulting service that allows customers to take the first step towards gaining control and effectively managing their data.

COPAN Systems customers are witnessing explosive growth in data, however the nature of this data type is different to that experienced in the past — it is more file-based, more media-based and businesses want to keep it for longer. This type of data that is written once, rarely changed and infrequently accessed is known as ‘Persistent Data.’ According to research firm The Info Pro, a typical Fortune 1000 enterprise will see their data storage needs grow by up to 230% by 2010.

The Enterprise Storage Group estimates that between 60% to 85% of the data sitting on primary systems is non-transactional or post-transactional — half of which is a replicate of non-transactional data. “The costs of keeping this type of persistent data on primary storage systems can be huge. Primary disk is more expensive to acquire, manage, maintain and power,” said Steve Duplessie of the ESG Group. “By moving data off expensive primary storage systems and onto lower-cost SATA-based secondary storage systems, organizations can significantly reduce capital and operational costs while continuing to ensure high availability, security and quick access to data.”

COPAN Systems’ Professional Services Division has launched this new Persistent Data Assessment Service after identifying the need to help customers understand where their most frequently accessed files reside, how much persistent data they have and what kind of medium it resides on. Armed with the information from this analysis, COPAN can then transition the data to their purpose-built Enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disk) platform that significantly improves storage utilization, improves service levels whilst also reducing administration workload. In addition there is a massive green benefit as power consumption, cooling costs and footprint can be reduced by up to 85%.

The simple audit and analysis typically takes under a week for most environments. It involves a non-obtrusive approach in which COPAN software is deployed on a customer-hosted central server, to automatically discover existing data and storage resources. The results are presented to the customer with a full set of recommendations for effectively managing their persistent data.

“Our customers are calling on COPAN Systems to help them understand and grapple with the explosion of data in the enterprise – a large part of which is persistent,” said Carl Elliott, Global Senior Director of Professional Services. “It’s a struggle for them, they know they can’t keep doing what they’re doing. They are running out of space and access to power but the SLAs from the business are increasing. The Persistent Data Assessment Service is the first step customers can take to effectively control and manage their existing and future persistent data.” Elliott continues, “Not only can we quantify and personalize the extent of persistent data, but we can do something about it by proposing a different way of managing and storing this data with our purpose-built Enterprise MAID platform. Other vendors are still proposing traditional storage solutions that are no longer appropriate for this type of data as they are optimized for transactional workloads that require high cost, high performance and more complex management environments. Perhaps more significantly, when you consider the environmental issues of space, power and cooling, these traditional solutions exacerbate the problems rather than help.”

Carl Elliott, Global Senior Director, Professional Services, has spent the last nine months spearheading and building COPAN Systems’ Professional Services Division which has recently expanded by adding seasoned industry resource in consulting services and delivery resource in North America, Asia Pacific, Japan and EMEA.

Prior to COPAN Systems, Carl helped large enterprise clients define and execute their global storage strategies from a leading independent storage consultancy. Before this, Carl worked at EMC where he built the Professional Services organization across EMEA, developed a partner services function, built vertical market propositions and also led a European-wide consulting initiative with Accenture.

COPAN Systems