New Tools for Hosting Companies by Debriefing Software

Debriefing Software A/S unveiled the Remote Backup Center, a special edition of Wizards Storage Portal for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) designed to help hosting companies automate many aspects of managing customers’ data backup and storage.

With Storage Resource Management (SRM) surveillance and analytical tools, the Remote Backup Center enables hosting companies to improve customers’ backup and storage efficiency and makes it easier to track and accurately bill customers for the use of backup space.

An add-on to the Wizards Storage Portal for TSM, the Remote Backup Center is already in use at Time Network Management AB, provider of IT services to a range of Swedish customers in different industries, many with locations around the world.

When Time Network Management was looking for an SRM tool to improve data hosting services, they were impressed with Wizards Storage Portal and the Remote Backup Center plug-in for IBM TSM.

“Being able to provide real-time, 24/7 surveillance of our customers’ systems means that we can ensure backup continuity wherever our customers are situated,” said Lennart Andersson, CEO of Time Network Management. “The Remote Backup Center’s automation features for analysing customer traffic and backup while automating invoicing, in particular, free our resources to focus on providing more valuable services. Debriefing Software is very tuned into supporting our goals to grow our data hosting services.”

Because the Remote Backup Center fulfills Time Network Management’s requirements, it is not necessary for the company to develop its own software and keep updating it with each new IBM release.

With the time and budget saved using the Remote Backup Center, Time Network Management plans to build managed services for customers who own their own backup solutions, but need Debriefing Software’s cloud-based SRM tool combined with TNM’s knowledge and expertise to monitor and analyse their backup installations.

Paul Stroem, global sales director, Debriefing Software, said: “Hosting providers are now experiencing  the perfect storm’ of data growth, increasing customer demands, and increasing need for storage space. This should be an extremely profitable time, but data centres have many challenges in gaining market share profitably under fierce competition, with cheap storage and limited IT budgets putting pressure on prices. That’s where Wizards Storage Portal comes in.”

Hosting providers can use Wizards Storage Portal and the Remote Backup Center plug-in for TSM to manage their customers’ backup and storage solutions more effectively and invoice them more easily and accurately, hence saving IT time and budget and giving themselves every opportunity to increase revenue and margins.

The Remote Backup Center allows a data centre to create a contract with end users, set the price per gigabyte, and then track and invoice customers for the amount of storage used. The data centre can then track the occupancy and other performance information and set alerts when performance thresholds are breached or problems arise.

It also provides the customer with access to the Wizards Storage Portal via a web browser or by using the WSP Mobile app on an iPhone or iPad. This gives customers direct access to both an overview and live information of their backup status and performance.

Jesper Matthiesen, CTO of Debriefing Software, said: “The Remote Backup Center plug-in for Wizards Storage Portal was specifically developed for hosting companies, which often use IBM Tivoli Storage Manager to automate data backup and restore functions for multiple small and mid-sized customers. Wizards Storage Portal’s Remote Backup Center plug-in for TSM is an excellent solution for making storage resource management on IBM TSM even easier and more cost-effective by removing the burden of reporting and monitoring system health, capacity and usage.”

Large enterprise organisations can also benefit from the Remote Backup Center plug-in by providing SRM and backup reporting to their respective application owners, as they often share similar challenges as outsourcing and hosting companies.

Other features of the Remote Backup Center
that are relevant for hosting companies include:

• Activity Log Browser: quickly identify specific system activity and error information amongst thousands of log files or locate the nodes generating the most errors.
• Active Alerts: set policies that send an alert automatically by SMS or email 24/7 if performance levels are breached, or scheduled events fail so that issues can be dealt with immediately.
• Occupancy History: draws a historic occupancy graph for whatever domain, file space-type, storage pool or timeframe is specified to ensure the system is either being optimized or not heading to capacity issues
• Node Occupancy: will list the highest occupancy growth with specific data
• Scheduled Daily Reports: save time by scheduling relevant reports to be sent directly to an email box at the intervals specified so they can be reviewed without having to log on to the Wizards Storage Portal
• TSM Client Events: see which scheduled events have not been completed and launch an investigation immediately

Wizards Storage Portal currently analyses more than 45,000 servers worldwide.