I read your piece iSCSI boasts hidden depths (see MicroScope, 15 January) with interest and thought you might like the point of view of a company currently on the periphery of this market but in the mainstream IP and broadband sector.
Griffin is the UK’s leading supplier of managed broadband to the channel and a year ago we launched a managed storage product based on a network of EqualLogic iSCSI SANs. Positioned as a replacement for dedicated servers at the high end, we started selling this direct while preparing for a full channel launch. After a slow start, recent growth has been nothing short of spectacular and we are already upgrading capabilities that we had expected to cope for two years.
We have found a sweet spot with ASPs and in companies that use dedicated servers to deliver their core product (e.g. e-commerce software/development companies) but for which hosting is a necessary evil rather than a profit centre. These companies are fed up with the rising costs of space and power and need something more robust than RAID 5 servers supported by tape or online back-up.
Our SAN solution gives them RAID 50, scalable storage, standby servers and snapshots as standard. They can start with a few gigabytes and grow innitely just by increasing their primary volume through a web-based portal. Most importantly they can restore from snapshots in minutes rather than the hours or days often required with tape or online back-up. When they consider all of the costs of their infrastructure together, without exception they have found they are paying less for what is a far better service.
So it could be that you are looking in the wrong place when considering whose market iSCSI is taking. None of the companies we have sold to have been using (or often have even heard of!) fibre channel SANs.
Andrew Dickinson - Sales and Marketing Director, Griffin Internet
Source: Microscope 19.02.07
Andrew Dickinson
