Unisys last week unveiled its new Metered Storage and Managed Utility Storage offerings, as part of an effort to help large organisations more easily procure storage capacity.
Metered Storage is designed to measure storage capacity usage on a gigabytes-per-month basis, Unisys officials said. The company helps users evaluate monthly infrastructure and storage device needs and then requires a one-year commitment to the program, explained Mark Feverston, director of enterprise server and storage infrastructure at Unisys in the US.
Unisys relies heavily on EMC's storage resource management technology to power its metered storage product, using EMC's Storagescope monitoring and reporting tool.
Feverston said Unisys Metered Storage deployments take into account any type of potential usage spikes a company may experience during busy or maintenance periods. For example, if Unisys and a customer project that an environment will require 25TB in the next four years, the amount of storage required to satisfy that forecast will be planned for, implemented and immediately made available -- and can be fully accessed based on current need.
Unisys does not charge for underutilisation of storage, Feverston added.
Without proper storage predictability, unnecessary spending on storage could become a major burden for organizations, industry experts say. According to a recent report from Forrester Research Inc., strained capacity can lead to a reactive approach toward storage management, forcing IT administrators to purchase storage at higher-than-normal prices.
By adding Managed Utility Storage to its storage portfolio, Unisys is banking on customers relinquishing partial or total control of their storage environment infrastructures, Feverston said. The evaluation process typically covers three to five years of an organization's storage requirements, he said.
Feverston said Unisys is considering including archiving, disaster recovery, governance and compliance under its Managed Utility Storage umbrella in the future.
