A comeback for managed storage services?

Managed storage service providers (MSSP), which store customer data at their own facilities, were one of the high-profile victims of the dot-com bust. But as the need to cost-effectively store and retrieve data grows, those providers are getting another look.

A 2003 Gartner Inc. survey of about 120 IT managers showed that 20 percent were using an MSSP, another 29 percent had used one in the past, 9 percent planned to use such a provider, and 42 percent had no interest, says Gartner analyst Adam Couture. By last year, 50 percent were using an MSSP, 34 percent planned to use one, 10 percent had used one but dropped it, and only 6 percent had no interest.

Ease of recovery is one major reason market research firm Synovate Americas in Chicago stores 25TB to 30TB of data using an online storage management service from Sun Managed Enterprise Services.

When a customer or researcher needs an old research report or an executive needs to restore data to his notebook computer, "we don't want to spend 48 hours getting a tape and loading it," says Prabhakar Sonparote, senior vice president and IT director at Synovate.