Features - Storage Innovations:

SOFTEK DEBUTS STORAGE HEALTH ASSESSMENT PROGRAM

Softek, a leading provider of storage management software, announced a new diagnostic program that gives Softek channel partners a powerful way to evaluate their customers' storage environment and demonstrate how businesses can better plan and optimize their storage resources.

The Softek Storage Health Assessment program offers Softek Synergy Partner Program members easy-to-use tools, reports and a step-by-step procedures guide for evaluating storage networks. Once an assessment is complete, channel partners are able to show customers and sales prospects how Softek Automated Storage solutions can reclaim up to 30 percent of their disk-based storage space, reduce data center costs, and allow businesses to delay or even avoid hardware purchases.

"At a time when budgets are flat or declining, IT managers continually face internal demands for additional storage space from existing and new applications," said Don James, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Fusion Storm a San Francisco-based Softek Synergy Partner Program member. "The Softek Storage Health Assessment program allows us to provide customers with the information they need to manage their storage growth in cost-effective and efficient ways. By being able to diagnose storage network inefficiencies, our sales consultants can offer a more strategic service to resource-constrained customers and sales prospects, which differentiates us from other resellers."

Working To Optimize Storage Environments

The first step in the Softek Storage Health Assessment program involves taking a snapshot of a customer's storage environment using the award-winning Softek Storage Manager storage resource management software. That snapshot is used to quickly generate reports that chart usage, file types and file accessibility. With that data, an executive-level summary of the businesses' current storage utilization is generated, along with a list of recommendations for optimizing the entire storage environment. The evaluation, which provides customers with concrete suggestions on where efficiencies and savings can be realized, is usually completed in two days.

The customer/prospect environments that will most benefit from the Softek Storage Health Assessment program are those that:

• Are near, or at, capacity on one or more servers
• Manually gather file level data
• Are frequently unable to complete disk backup operations in an allotted timeframe
• Use different servers for applications or have a lot of servers
• Have problematic or high maintenance backup solutions
• Spend too much time managing storage-related problems such as running out of disk space
• Are looking for threshold-based monitoring
• Include from 10 to 20 Windows or Unix servers, with a combined capacity of up to five terabytes of data.

"This program is another example of how we are helping our resellers and their customers deal with the mission critical task of managing storage," said Erna Arnesen, vice president of worldwide channels at Softek. "With the Softek Storage Health Assessment, resellers have an easy-to-use, yet powerful diagnostic tool they can depend on to increase revenue potential, while allowing them to become a trusted advisor to their clients."