FusionStorm Delivers

Delivering technology solutions for over 14 years, FusionStorm has grown its business through internal expansion and acquisitions. The San Francisco-based company’s goal is to enable its customers to obtain competitive advantage through innovative IT solutions. That portfolio of solutions has grown over the years and now covers core areas such as systems and storage, enterprise software, networks, VoIP, and security. These practice areas are supported by a suite of managed and professional services and technology from industry leading vendors.

To support this broad range of solutions spanning multiple technology domains, FusionStorm leverages a four part methodology to ensure its offerings are optimized for the specific needs of its customers. Starting with an assessment of business and technology needs, the solution is then carefully architected within the allocated budget. FusionStorm certified experts then integrate the solution into existing environments and processes. Once installed, they will support the solution, offering both 24×7 help desk and fully managed services. FusionStorm’s people, process, and use of technology have proven to be a successful formula, winning the company numerous awards.

Partnership with EMC

By partnering with EMC, FusionStorm gains access to a broad range of best of breed products from which they can create technology solutions that positively impact its clients’ business. Currently, FusionStorm is able to select products from EMC that enable more robust storage, backup, disaster recovery (DR), and compliance environments. FusionStorm is the key to understanding the needs of the business and architecting a solution that meets or exceeds those needs. The services that they wrap around the technology ensure that customers receive world class solutions that support current and future requirements. They go beyond creating and deploying a solution, they are the single point of contact for on-going support, and leverage proven certified experts to deliver remote managed service.

Fusion Storm has been working with EMC for five years and has achieved the highest level of partnership in the EMC Velocity program: Signature Partner status. This status reflects FusionStorm’s ability to deliver EMC-based solutions with a team of highly qualified professionals. In fact, the FusionStorm team boasts more than 30 individual EMC certifications. In addition to achieving Signature status, FusionStorm also became a member of EMC’s Authorized Services Network (ASN). This enables FusionStorm to act as the single point of contact for its customers, and also to have tight alignment and communications with EMC to quickly resolve any issues.  As a part of EMC’s ASN, FusionStorm continuously ensures that all aspects of planning, delivery, and support for EMC solutions are current.

As a validation of FusionStorm’s ability to successfully deliver world class backup solutions based on EMC technology, FusionStorm was awarded the prestigious Backup, Recovery, and Archive Partner of the Year award at EMC’s 2008 North America Partner Summit. This award honors the company that has demonstrated tremendous success and leveraged its deep expertise and knowledge base to enable customers to solve  critical business problems with EMC-based backup and archiving solutions. The award serves to validate what FusionStorm’s customers already know, that the combination of EMC software and FusionStorm’s intellectual property deliver real business value.

Ensuring Proper Backup and Recovery

Every organization is experiencing continuous data growth, creating data protection, cost, and performance challenges.  Recent ESG research[1] indicated that while keeping storage costs and growth in check is important, the number one challenge organizations faced with regard to storage is the need to improve backup and recovery processes. The top five challenges reported are displayed in Figure 1.

Why has backup and recovery become such a daunting challenge? In order to respond more quickly to changing market demands, IT is tasked with providing higher levels of service to the business while minimizing capital and operational expenses. This means keeping pace with the growing amount of data that needs to be protected within shrinking backup and recovery windows, with fewer resources and with potentially outdated equipment and software. It is important that IT get the backup right as more companies and industries are subject to an increasing number of regulation and compliance issues that demand information availability. This creates an additional burden for IT in that the data must not only be protected, but also easily searchable and retrievable. True end-to-end solutions need to consider all of these requirements to be effective. .

Given all the other challenges and emergencies that require the attention of IT resources on a daily basis, there is little time left to evaluate new technology and adequately assess, design, implement, and manage a new backup and recovery solution.

Selecting the Right Partner

Organizations need enhanced solutions to meet current and future needs, but with existing staff stretched so thin, many must rely on proficient solution providers. Therefore, partner selection is important. Items to consider in the selection process are:

• Professional Services: Leveraging companies that provide a full suite of professional and managed services can really help to accelerate the time to value for a new backup and recovery solution. The partner should have strong vendor backing and a history of delivering valuable solutions. The fact that EMC recognized FusionStorm as its Backup, Recovery & Archive Partner of the Year is a very good indicator of the quality of their services.
• Certifications and Corporate Partnerships: Verify that the staff has the appropriate vendor certifications and strong vendor relationships. FusionStorm has more than 30 technical certifications just from EMC, is in the top tier of EMC’s velocity program, and is part of EMC’s Authorized Service Network. They have earned ASN specialty designation in both Consolidation and Backup, reflecting their deep commitment to knowledge and expertise of EMC solutions
• Use of Best Practices: Ensuring that a provider utilizes best practices and proven methodologies is also indicative of a reputable company. Standard operating procedure for FusionStorm includes a four step methodology to deliver repeatable, predictable results.
• Geographic Coverage Area: Can the company provide support for the solutions—either directly or via remote managed services? FusionStorm has offices and support staff nationwide.
• Post-sale support: Another significant selection criterion is the level of support provided after the sale. Does the company offer managed services or handle maintenance and break/fix for the solutions it designs and implements? Because FusionStorm offers managed services, it makes sense that the better it does designing and implementing a solution, the easier it will be to manage, resulting in higher service levels to the business.

The Bigger Truth

FusionStorm has steadily grown its business and expanded its offerings to solve its customers’ most challenging problems. They partner with industry leading software and technology vendors like EMC to ensure rock solid solutions and invest heavily in training staff so they can remain current on the latest solutions and architectures. As companies struggle to meet the service levels demanded by the business, companies like FusionStorm are well positioned to help accelerate the time to value for new IT investments or to help optimize existing ones.  If they are not on your short list, they should be.