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Storage That Phones Home: Page 3 of 4

NextNine has about 50 employees and 15 customers, including GE Healthcare, Invensys, Allscripts, Motorola, Comverse, and Openwave. One of these, Motorola, invested an undisclosed sum in September 2006, along with Ascend Technology Ventures, Infinity Venture Capital Fund, Ofer Hi-Tech, Yozma Venture Capital Group, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Private Equity, and Redwood Venture Partners.

One analyst sees the automation portion of the equation as most compelling. "IDC believes that automation technologies are becoming increasingly important for support organizations," wrote Dan Yachin, research director, IDC EMEA Emerging Technologies, in a prepared statement in February this year. "This way, automation capabilities can allow support providers to scale up to meet increasing customer demand due to the growing reliance on and complexity of IT environments."

Not everyone's convinced these remote support tools are the way for IT vendors and their customers to go.

Still, the great mass of IT users and their suppliers are angling for better solutions, and it's likely they'll be considering these kinds of automation tools for the mix.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch

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