Visual Storage Intelligence
Adding Transparency into Storage

As the market for storage technology grows with an array of options that help store and secure the ever-increasing volume of data, enterprises are trying to make sure they adopt the right kind of business applications and tools, which fit within their budget and infrastructure needs. A multitude of solution providers, are defining new ways to manage unstructured data and assess the impacts of various storage practices. Phil Godwin, President of Visual Storage Intelligence (VSI) identified that although a variety of solution are available, companies strive to collate data coming from disparate sources and need solutions that help them visualize ways to tackle the storage problems. “With legacy Storage Resource Management (SRM) tools, firms incurred huge cost to ensure their storage systems were intact. Most surprisingly, a significant number of companies still rely on spreadsheets for data storage,” according to Godwin. In order to present storage administrators with the much needed visibility into utilization, configuration, and performance data to facilitate better decision making, VSI was founded as a subsidiary to the IT infrastructure reseller—Clear Technologies. “We set out to develop an automated approach at a reasonable cost to help clients receive better insight into their environment without manual intervention or data entry around the storage system,” expresses Godwin.

VSI delivers an online, cross-vendor storage-reporting tool that quickly helps companies visually map out their storage arrays’ utilization, configuration, and free space. The company performs two kinds of reporting—operational reporting and business level application reporting. The cloud-based reporting gives admins and first line manager’s holistic views into configuration, utilization, and performance level of the storage array. This business level application reporting enables CIOs to gain the full view from the early provisioning stage of product utilization to its performance.

Delivered as a SaaS solution, VSI provides a visual health analysis of complex storage arrays quickly.

We set out to develop an automated approach at a reasonable cost to help clients get better insight into their environment without having the manual aspect into the system

The company captures data and information from the storage system, securely exports it to their cloud-based solution for generating visualized reports that enable decision-making. “We provide a single view of the storage array in a unified way,” says Godwin. In an implementation highlight, VSI worked with a customer to deploy visual storage intelligence into their storage environment, and after 12 months of deployment, the client was able to save nearly three million dollars. “They called it hard dollars. By getting the visibility of their storage environment, they were able to improve their efficiency by 32 to 44 percent,” stated Godwin. With VSI’s tool, the customer did not have to make additional purchases related to storage. By getting visibility, they could very quickly and easily identify possible utilization problems.

VSI maintains its competitive advantage by identifying unique challenges faced by CIOs and storage administrators. “We look at the problems from a very customer-centric angle to help customers understand the volume level all the way up to the host, and the application,” asserts Godwin. In the crowded market place of SRM products, VSI’s solutions have a distinct position in the niche marketplace. “We are ensuring clients take effective decisions related to storage without intervention and training.”

For the future, VSI is focused on incorporating cloud reporting and analytics capability into their visual storage tool to remain relevant at the long term in this rapidly changing IT industry.