The bMighty Blog -- Storage

How much money did this new product save the company? That question arises in just about every management meeting, so it would be helpful if you had an answer to it.

Finding an answer to that question may soon become simpler. Rather than focus on improving speeds and feeds, Compellent Technologies enhanced the reporting capabilities found in the latest release , version 3.1, of its Enterprise Manager system. Consequently, the management tool features two new reporting functions and a chargeback system. Hero Reports generate continuous snapshots of storage usage that illustrate how automated tiered storage saves companies money. A Power Savings Report illustrates green improvements, such as calculating annual savings in electricity and carbon dioxide emissions through reduced device requirements. A Storage-Based Chargeback system associates storage usage with individual business departments, so small and medium businesses can charge those who fill up storage devices.

Enterprise Manager works with Compellent Storage Center, a storage area network (SAN). The management tool automates replication among multiple Compellent SANs to support items, such as disaster recovery and business continuity. In addition, the integrated Free Space Recovery utility helps improve disk utilization by reclaiming file space from deleted Windows files and removing deleted blocks from overall volume size. The new features are available free to customers with an existing maintenance contract or for $1,300 each for the main system, the reporting functions, and the chargeback system.

With annual revenue of $51 million in 2007, Compellent is a small players in the highly competitive storage market. Consequently, buying its products represents a risk since it does not have the resources to match larger, better established competitors. Therefore its future is not certain. The storage supplier has been doing well, posting a 119 percent increase in revenue from 2006 to 2007 and growing its customer base by 107% in that period. The vendor has also taken a practical approach to building its product line, concentrating on low-cost, easy to use devices, with a focus on the small and medium business market rather than going after Fortune 500 enterprises. At the very least, you may want to take a look at its management reports and then ask your storage supplier about delivering something like them. After all, you want to have an answer to the omnipresent question raised at all managers’ meetings, don’t you?

Which storage supplier do you work with? What type of reporting tools does it offer? How much interest would you have in something like Hero or Green Savings reports?

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