Chargeback Plods On

NTP Software today announced general availability of a Storage Billing System module for its Storage M&A suite -- becoming the latest of several vendors trying to tackle the business end of storage management. (See NTP Adds Billing .)

NTP's new Windows-based package links data on who's using storage with the storage itself. It can track, for instance, how many Mbytes of a particular array is being used by Joe Smith for his accounting server.

It sounds great, but it remains to be seen how well it is actually received. NTP is among a select few suppliers with chargeback products, a list that includes a motley crew of vendors, none of which is particularly focused on billing. Included are Bocada, EMC, HP, Onaro, and Symantec. (See Onaro One-Ups SRM and HP Chomps AppIQ & Peregrine.) Others, including BakBone, IBM, and Softek, have yet to to add chargeback to their wares.

What's the holdup? It seems many companies just aren't into chargeback yet. A BakBone spokesperson, for instance, says it will offer chargeback if the supplier's customers want it -- and that hasn't happened, apparently. IBM, which acquired chargeback technology with CIMS Lab earlier this year, offers its Usage and Accounting Manager only for x86 and mainframe computers, not storage systems. While IBM plans to extend this product to storage, it has no specific timeframe for doing so. (See IBM & the Virtual Chargeback.)

Another obstacle to storage chargeback seems to be that it calls for companies to sort out exactly what needs to be charged, and that's something that many haven't yet been able to do."[Storage chargeback] really requires some intelligent definition," says analyst Mike Karp of Enterprise Management Associates. "It's not just about the amount of storage used, but about the services used... Chargeback has to be qualitative, not just quantitative."

Many IT divisions simply don't have a good handle on how to charge their internal customers, Karp says. For example, one department may use more storage than another but require less time from IT personnel.

One user, a storage manager with a West Coast financial services firm, who asked not to be named, gives an idea of the vagaries. He points out that some disk arrays now support both Fibre Channel and SATA drives, but the SRM tools that come with them don't distinguish the use of one kind of disk storage from another. On top of that, every company has its own way of billing back for IT usage.

"I definitely see the challenge. Every environment is different... and SRM tools don't always provide great detail," this user says. His company uses EMC's management software, which he says has a chargeback feature, but IT deploys its own customized Excel program for chargeback of storage. For this Excel program, technicians have assigned different values to different tiers of storage, he says.

There are other challenges, too. Though NTP's new software can support 13-month usage reports with calculated average maximums, the onus is still on the end user to set up the system. A company needs to specify the name or ID of users, a billing department code, a department name, and a domain or machine associated with the use of a filer, DAS, or SAN array. For users still in the process of sorting out their ILM strategies, getting this information is a challenge.It's starting to look as if having an ILM strategy is a prerequisite for accurate storage chargeback. Unless a company can match the use of SAN, NAS, DAS, and other kinds of storage to specific storage applications and services instead of just to specific machines, chargeback remains primitive. This is why today's storage chargeback systems are primarly focused on the ILM model. According to Tom Rose, portfolio lead, storage software, for HP's StorageWorks division, "HP Chargeback Manager... [is] better suited for ILM and tiered storage initiatives."

From NTP's perspective, it's also important to fit the chargeback software to the way a company does its accounting -- offering monthly reports, a choice of averages versus maximums for the reports, and so forth. "Most products are built by techies for techies," notes NTP CTO Patrick Hynds. "But ours is built by techies for financial people."

NTP is also pricing its software comparably to, if not a bit lower than, what's out there. The M&A Storage Billing System will cost about $1,095 per server license, In comparison, HP's Chargeback Manager starts at about $6,000 for a typical configuration. A subscription to Bocada's Enterprise 4 starts at $7,500 for the application with coverage for up to 500 backup clients.

Nonetheless, NTP's new software remains a question mark. There are no users available to comment on it. Until there are, its impact remains unknown. Then again, until chargeback takes off in a bigger way, the impact of other products on the market will also remain unclear.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch