StorageNetworks Inc, the Boston, Massachusetts start-up, has allied with Comdisco Inc to offer business continuity and disaster recovery services on top of its outsourced storage offerings. StorageNetworks, which was launched in April, sets up and runs companies’ storage requirements from its datacenters in New York, Boston, San Jose, Houston or Chicago. Under the partnership with Rosemont, Illinois Comdisco, the start-up will extend its services to offer customers complete disaster recovery from one of Comdisco’s business continuity facilities. The latter is fully equipped with desks, telephones, fax machines and everything a business would need, including staff, to continue its operations in the event its premises become unusable, as a result of a natural disaster or IT breakdown. In addition, Comdisco would provide the network infrastructure to connect the stored data, from StorageNetworks premises, to Comdisco’s datacenters.
Jim O’Hara, StorageNetworks’ vice president of business development said the deal wasn’t exclusive but that both companies will market each other’s services to future customers in future. It allows us to offer a complete, bullet proof storage, back up and disaster recovery solution, he said. Customers will be able to come to either Comdisco or StorageNetworks and plan their data management strategies from scratch. He described the alliance as a perfect marriage between the two vendors, with StorageNetworks providing a front end, storage offering for Comdisco’s users while Comdisco offered back end services to its own outsourced offerings.
