services 2015
TRANSCRIPT
1
Services 2015
2
Market Challenges
Nowhere is the exponential growth of data felt more acutely than in the world of
enterprise storage. In fact, the growth of storage budgets now threatens to eclipse
the growth of an organisation's overall IT budget.
Instead of continuing to add more storage systems and more management
complexity, a more cost-effective, sustainable approach is required. Over the last
year, we have been speaking with our valued clients to understand their challenges
and to support them on the journey to cost reduction, efficiency and commercial
advantage.
What’s hurting our customers? We continue to listen to our clients and their challenges, since our business is built
on their success. In this section we look at some of the key areas that are causing
concern for our clients.
In 2014, our client’s CIOs stated that they were facing many new challenges
regarding their data, apps and their storage. They were keen to combat
exponential data growth, whilst increasing utilisation of existing storage assets.
Reducing capital storage expenditure was a common theme in our discussions, with
many CIOs being forced to look at delaying a storage infrastructure refresh for up to
2 years.
In 2015, most of our clients are planning new storage deployments. For some, it’s to
provide additional capacity on an existing system. For others, it’s to embrace new
technologies and methodologies to reduce their datacentre cooling and power
consumption.
Hyper-converged Infrastructure is a common approach for addressing these
challenges. Pure SSD arrays are also increasingly being used to boost application
performance and reduce licensing costs especially for databases.
3
For 60% of our clients, Big Data continues to be a major topic for discussion. We
have spotted an emerging trend; there is a realisation amongst CIOs that having a
Big Data strategy just isn’t enough. Rather, a business strategy that includes Big
Data is the best way to get their business to adopt a plan for the harvesting and
analysis of real time trends, enabling them to find tangible commercial gain.
With 70% of our clients’ overall IT budgets in 2014 being spent on existing
operations, our customers were keen to find efficiencies that could be made whilst
supporting their diverse infrastructures.
Some pains included the operational cost of multiple contracts with numerous
suppliers. This often led not only to missed renewal dates but to systems becoming
unsupported, leaving the most important business data unprotected. This is aside
from the cost reductions that could have been made by merging contracts and
reducing the number of support providers.
4
One of the key headaches experienced was the desire to simplify the management
of the storage arrays. Key themes focused on doing more with less: engineers who
had been supporting historic storage were needed to work on new technologies
and support the adoption of new Apps or Services, so that the business could retain
a commercial advantage. The bottom line is that managing and administering an
existing estate involves both risk and specialised expertise.
In summary, we were able to help our clients address many of the challenges
above. By offering a range of services to find both commercially viable operational
solutions to the pains mentioned, they had more funds and more resources to focus
on what they do best. We even provide a no cost, no obligation IT health check if
you’re worried and need some expert advice for your business.
Failing storage systems can be catastrophic for your business.
We understand how widespread the issues can be for your users, employees and
customers.
Reduce your risk by working with PrimeNet’s proactive support team.
5
Who is PrimeNet?
Since 1988 Systems Express has been an expert in Data General and EMC. In 2012,
Primenet Ltd broke away from Systems Express and became a company in its own
right. Since then, Primenet has worked diligently to emerge as a major player in the
European Storage Maintenance Services market.
Under the guidance of the management team, Primenet continues to find and
retain the best technical talent, the best systems and the strongest processes to
deliver bullet proof services to our clients.
Our professional ex-vendor engineers are at the heart of the high level of service
that we provide our clients. Whether you require full management of a storage
system, a virtual Storage Admin service, or our highly acclaimed maintenance
services, we operate in such a way as to complement the skills of your existing
team.
6
The Management Team
Eran Cohen (Managing Director)
Eran started in IT in 2000, following national service in Israel. He worked as
technical head of projects for the network security team at Malam. Malam is the
2nd largest IT company in Israel. His team supported the Israeli government,
Banks and Mobile operators from Cyber Security threats.
For the last 10 years, he has supported banks in London, spending the last 4 growing the
PrimeNet business. His main aim is to grow the PrimeNet organisation to include new services
and maintain the highest level of service for his clients.
When he’s not in the office, he is a keen football fan, supporting Chelsea FC. He used to fly over
from Israel 4-5 times a year just to see them play!
David Cohen (Director)
David is a veteran of the storage world with over 27 years of experience in the UK
alone. As well as offering vast knowledge on deploying and managing storage,
Systems Express has one of the largest stock holding of current and legacy storage
components in Europe.
His clients include the majority of Global support organisations with the spares they
use for their break/fix services. As well as running the Systems Express Business,
David offers consultancy as well as strong management to make sure that PrimeNet’s
growth is steady and continuous.
Duncan Brown (Head of Infrastructure Services)
Duncan is an expert in Cloud Computing strategy as well as outsourced
infrastructure management. Having originally qualified in Product Design
(BSc HONS), his carrier spanning 12 years in IT has included working for
VMware’s EMM division, running his own Datacentre consultancy as well
as deploying managed storage infrastructure solutions for Nokia, Citigroup
and KPMG amongst many others.
When he is not helping his clients to reduce costs and improve service,
Duncan enjoys wild swimming, photography and also runs baking lessons
for chefs.
7
Our Services
Storage Maintenance Services
We understand that the market and our clients
are fed up with paying too much for vendor
maintenance agreements.
Supporting older systems is a real challenge
especially if the vendor is no longer supporting
that system. We are here to reduce the risk and
hassle of maintaining a very important business
asset.
Why not speak to us to find out if you could save
money and reduce risk through our more
inclusive service.
Service Features
• support services for hardware fault resolution and software support • monitoring and full management solutions including Storage Admin as a
Service • service and storage reviews • 15 minute response SLAs available: we build the contract to meet your
requirements • <4 hour mean time to resolution • The largest single stock holding of EMC components in the UK for a support
provider • Sub 1 year contracts and consolidation of separate contracts • Straight to Level 3 engineer option • Direct access to vendor support when needed • Site Audits and sparing
PrimeNet Managed Services
Our services are built on our operational experience and friendly support team. By outsourcing management, our clients build on their team's skills when they need to. This leaves money and resources available for new projects.
The other key element to our managed services is prevention. Prevention is better
than cure. That's why we track your systems all the time as well as reporting back
8
on capacity, health and configuration. We provide periodic meetings to make sure
that recommendations are reviewed and improvements made.
Our offering includes:
flexible pricing
remote or onsite support
named account managers who look after a customer until a problem is dealt
with Professional Services
Storage Administrator as a Service
At a time when the exponential growth of data is placing increased load on a
company’s IT infrastructure, our clients need a flexible and efficient strategy for
Managing their data.
Storage Administration as a Service (or SAaaS) is the provisioning of an experienced
Storage Administrator as a monthly chargeable service to help an organisation cope
with the high demand for experienced storage engineering resource. We offer this
service for EMC, NetApp and many other storage vendors.
Challenges for Storage owners
CIOs, CTOs and IT Leaders face multiple challenges in using storage technologies to
deliver real world value:
Data Volumes are growing exponentially
IT expected to deliver more with flat budgets
Management looking for strategic and tactical wins to support a ‘nexus of
forces’
Skills and resources are stretched
Traditional IT can’t always support the rate of change
Resources are needed to build new lines of business quickly
Costs of recruiting highly skilled engineers are rising
Infrastructure planning and implementations.
9
How does SAaaS work?
Since all companies are different, the service we offer is designed to meet the exact
needs of the individual organisation.
Our engagement process starts with understanding the challenges that the clients
are facing before defining the scope and the hand off between the current service
owners. Think of it as a job interview for a new hire Storage Admin.
Once we have understood the requirement and have defined the deliverables, we
then configure remote access if possible, define the review and escalation process
and you’re ready to go. Alternatively, one of our approved engineers can be
deputed on site Benefits
Benefits
Using our SAaaS service :
Over 20 years of storage experience
No additional costs on Storage expertise
As a service partner of the leading vendors we have a direct access to the
support knowledgebase and support engineers
All our engineers are fully qualified by the vendors
We are equipped with fully tested lab which can act as a POC for the
companies new project
Off loading the costs of recruiting and training highly skilled engineers
Future planning and project implementations will be done as part of the
service to work on the designated projects.
Professional Services
Continuous upgrades of infrastructure and storage are essential. Supporting App
development and improving operational agility are just two important issues. It is
important to get the greatest Return on Investment from all infrastructure. Our
services give IT Leaders information on health, capacity and configuration
So if you need IT advice or support at any point, we are always happy to talk with
you.
Storage Health Check
10
A key part of our storage consultancy services is our health check service. Health
checks help to identify performance issues, improve efficiency and reduce
management costs. Our team of consultants are also able to pinpoint flaws in setup
and configuration.
We provide leadership for clients by reviewing the performance, reliability and
security of storage. Our consultants can visit you onsite or access systems by VPN
for the audit.
The health check includes reports for IT Leaders, often used as justification for
budget. Consultants review the findings with clients to review possible
improvements. Consultants then build a plan so that work on important tasks can
start first.
Storage System Architecture
A well designed system can help reduce the cost of power and cooling in the
datacentre. Also, over provisioning uses up valuable capital and puts extra pressure
on management. By understanding your current and future requirements, we are
able to offer our clients bespoke architectural plans for more efficient systems.
Our designs follow best practises and give clients a fully qualified second opinion.
Data Migration
Streamlined migrations ensure that new features reach users faster. Moving data
from one array to another is hard. Especially if there is little or no window
for downtime. With PrimeNet, you could lower costs and migration time by 50%.
Most storage environments operate with critical apps running 24/7. We interpret the
factors that affect the method of data migration. We will plan the key stages, migrate the
data and provide a report upon completion.
Get in touch
+ 44 (0) 20 3384 3916
www.primenetuk.com