Storage Access Lands Law Firm

Storage Access, a six-month old storage service provider (SSP), announced today that it has signed four new customers this week (see Storage Access Names Customers).

They include a major law firm: Florida-based Gunster Yoakley & Stewart PA. Winning its business is a real coup for Storage Access and an endorsement of the SSP concept as a whole. A common criticism that has been made of this nascent market is that companies would not be prepared to entrust mission-critical data -- such as highly confidential client files and other legal documents -- to new SSPs.

Gunster Yoakley & Stewart, however, just handed over the whole ball of wax. The firms clients include international, national, and local businesses; institutions and government offices; as well as individuals. The company has seven offices in Florida that are home to 150 attorneys and 350 employees. All the data generated by this business will now be backed up, monitored, mirrored, and managed off-site at Storage Access’s data center in Miami.

“The explosive growth of data that we are required to manage has forced us to look to an outsourced solution for answers,” says Michael Greene, part of the governing committee at Gunster Yoakley. “It doesn't make sense for us to continually purchase more storage and servers; the money, time, and resources that we would devote to hosting and maintaining data servers is rapidly becoming uneconomical.”

The other three Storage Access customers are South Florida-based technology firms Cyop.net, Eteneo, and Questinghound Technologies.Next month Storage Access plans to extend its services to New York City, where it will colocate its servers in one of the large IXCs there. The company also has deals with Telseon Inc. and Yipes Communications Inc. for backup and monitoring services across their high-speed networks.Storage Access has plenty of competition (see StorageWay Snags $42M), but it is getting customers to sign on the dotted line. That is a step ahead of many of the SSPs fighting for a slice of this business. And the legal market is quite a plum.

There's plenty more business out there, analysts say. Salomon Smith Barney predicts the SSP market will exceed $8 billion in 2003 and account for 25 percent of the market for storage products. IDC

predicts the market for storage "utilities" will reach $5.5 billion in 2003. Additionally, a recent survey -- undertaken by Light Reading, Byte and Switch's sister publication, and tele.com -- provides further details of why service providers are considering storage services (see Storage Services Survey).

— Jo Maitland, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch http://www.byteandswitch.com