Untitled Document
KODAK OUTLINES WINNING STRATEGY
From STORAGE Magazine
Vol 4 No 05 - September/October 2004
National storage manager Alan Russell outlines Kodak Service & Support’s position in the storage industry in run-up to Storage Expo 2004
The storage market is without doubt continuing to grow at a rapid rate.
Currently worth anywhere between $60bn and $100bn, storage is big business,
illustrated by the fact that, for every $1 spent on storage, it costs between
$3-5 to manage it. With IT managers expected to deliver more ROI [return on
investment] from their existing spend, they rightly need more from their service
provider. Storage requirement standards are rising and existing equipment is
expected to enjoy a longer life expectancy.
Kodak Service & Support, one of the most experienced service organisations in
the industry, is equipped to handle the service and support needs for more than
20 manufacturers’ products, including tape drives and juke-boxes, through to
entire RAID and SAN environments. Uniquely, therefore, we offer support not only
for the storage hardware, but also the network environment within which it is
contained.
The Kodak Service & Support team was voted ‘Storage Service Company of the Year
2004’ at the recent hotly-contested Storries awards. It is the first time we
have entered the industry awards, voted by readers of StorAge magazine, making
the win even more heart-warming for the Kodak team.
Our award-winning team meets the rising standards of storage requirements by
offering our customers a full and highly flexible one-stop-shop service, through
a nationwide support team. Kodak’s flexibility comes through recognising that
not all services are required by every organisation. Instead, we offer the
services to complement and enhance existing systems, ensuring that our customers
are getting the most out of their storage equipment investment.
Without a doubt, we’re set to see many different solutions and service options
at the Storage Expo this year. There’ll certainly be more about Information
Lifecycle Management (ILM), and how it is changing the process and location of
data storage. By shifting low-value data, old or less useful information to a
lower cost storage device - and keeping only high-value data on higher
specification equipment - valuable storage space can be freed up and deployed
elsewhere.
Kodak Service & Support is now one of the leading service and storage management
companies in the world, and we expect to provide some of the show’s highlights
this year. Enjoying full SNIA (Storage Network Industry Association)
accreditation, our service & support team provides a one-stop shop for our
customers covering:
Storage devices
High-speed connectivity devices
SAN device development
SAN management
The SNIA programme was first adopted in the UK and is now being rolled out
throughout the rest of EMEA. Service and support teams, like Kodak, need to use
such programmes to work with international customers on a local level, in order
that service and support programmes can be tailored to best fit other countries.
The ultimate goal is that international customers will benefit from the same
level of professional service and support, regardless of the actual geographical
location of the equipment.
One of the main benefits for our customers is that Kodak Service & Support
remains completely independent in the channel. We don’t sell hardware or
software. This allows us to work with various tiers of the channel to ensure we
can provide our customers with a complete one-stop-shop service that takes the
pain away from managing their storage requirements.
|
