Necessary as they are, they do not enable the IT department to add value to the business. To date, however, there have been a number of obstacles in the way of handing storage over to a third party. Another ongoing issue is the fact that a lot of storage is still bought as server-attached, which gives the impression that the storage is somehow 'free' with the box. The fact that disbursed storage then has to be integrated into an enterprise-wide backup and recovery system tends to be seen as a separate issue, to be handled by automated backup and management frameworks. Another barrier, of course, is cultural attitudes to data ownership.
Companies still get extremely twitchy about the idea of leaving their data in someone else's hands.
It would be just a short hop for us to move from building storage devices to providing a managed service. There have been lots of thoughts about this, but it would have to be a serious undertaking, properly planned, as well as properly resourced. We would have to do the job comprehensively if we did it at all, with everything that means in terms of the technical ramifications to make it work. However, Melloy believes that central storage warehouses providing managed services to corporate clients are absolutely inevitable. IDC figures support his view.