DDN Expands Services Portfolio

DDN (DataDirect Networks, Inc.) is growing its services offerings with embedded onsite professionals and managed services to support in-house technology teams.

It has technologists that can serve as storage account managers, technical account managers and storage analysts, and has several customers utilizing the resources across public sector organizations like federal and state government as well as private businesses.

Technologists with secret level clearances and above can advance missions for national security organizations by maximizing DDN-designed storage solutions as part of an agency’s onsite technology team.

“Labor shortage challenges have made it difficult to hire, train and retain top level technology professionals,” said James Coomer, SVP of products. “While both public and private sectors are having trouble attracting top talent, this issue is felt more acutely in government, where the hiring process can take months. DDN’s embedded technologists fill this need by providing specialized talent that can engage immediately.“

Embedded technologists provide strategic and operational support for DDN-based technologies, including: 

• A³I AI-optimized infrastructure: Enables insights when processing large amounts of data, making AI-powered innovation easier with faster performance, scalability and simplified operations.
• DDN EXAScaler parallel file system: Combines flash and disk storage to enable data-intensive workflows at scale. A fully integrated EXAScaler appliance combines a hyperconverged storage platform with parallel filesystem software in a package that’s easy to deploy.
• DDN Insight: Helps organizations see across their infrastructure and workloads to improve service levels and find the root cause of complex issues faster. It can monitor arrays, filesystems, servers, and applications from a single dashboard.
• EXAScaler cloud services: Optimizes workloads including AI, ML and HPC with stable, fast and scalable file storage deployed on popular public cloud services.

Organizations are facing multiple challenges over data management beyond the IT talent gap. Spiraling cloud costs are driving more frequent data repatriation and the immense amount of data required for AI, analytics and HPC projects has created entirely new demands for IT organizations to support. By offering managed services, along with embedded staff, the vendor offers organizations a flexible way to adopt advanced storage capabilities, without additional stress on an existing IT team.

“As leaders in large storage, our solutions are supporting next gen technology that can solve the world’s biggest challenges, including climate change, deep space exploration and medical research,” said Coomer. “With our enhanced services offerings, organizations can focus on advancing their research and mission, not on hiring and training specialized storage personnel.“

DDN’s fully managed services can be utilized regardless of deployment location, with options for in-cloud or in the data center. These options allow customers to scale their initiatives without having to deal with managing or operationalizing their data infrastructure. Company’s understanding of the demands placed by performance-hungry AI and HPC applications allows customers to maximize the value of their applications while intelligently scaling performance and capacity to maintain cost control.

Professional Services Resources
Firm’s expanded professional services are designed to meet customer needs. DDN’s storage account managers provide strategic case management and a holistic view across the enterprise to develop and implement effective solutions. Technical account managers serve as liaisons and advisors on an ongoing basis to ensure infrastructure operations and minimize risk.

Storage analysts provide embedded storage system expertise and work as part of the in-house team. These employees assist in daily storage administration tasks while also analyzing the entire environment to advise how to improve all of the organization’s storage systems. Storage analysts can install, expand, monitor, upgrade, and troubleshoot storage solutions while also handling physical part replacement and preventative maintenance. Additionally, these employees can be fully onsite, fully remote or serve in a hybrid role.

Firm’s technologists hold secret clearances and above to support US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community entities.

DDN’s embedded resources add to its growing professional services offerings. These professional services engineers also offer planning and implementation services, infrastructure assessment, performance tuning, and a system health check to ensure an organization’s systems are delivering return and value.