3PAR

Overview

3PAR is a global provider of on-demand storage, a market that continues to grow in tandem with the growth in data of all types. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) storage resources are provided via highly-virtualized, tightly-clustered, and dynamically-tiered storage arrays built for utility computing. Businesses can use utility computing to build a cost-effective virtualized IT infrastructures for flexible workload consolidation. They compete with Amazon S3.

3PAR solutions help to address storage underutilization, inefficiencies, and to minimize power consumption. 3PAR Utility Storage gives customers an alternative to traditional arrays by delivering resilient infrastructure with increased agility to meet rapidly changing business needs, while lowering costs associated with storage capacity, administration, and SAN infrastructure. Their solutions are "built to meet the demands of open systems consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management, and performance-intensive applications."

3PAR's on-demand storage solutions are used "by 7 of the world's top 10 revenue-generating managed service providers" and has been deployed by many Web 2.0 customers like MySpace, Tickets.com, Priceline.com and Shopzilla.

Value Proposition

"3PAR delivers a smart (self-managing), thin (inherently efficient), and ready (resiliently adaptable) alternative to traditional storage through the application of internal, array-based virtualization."

Customers get a 10x increase in administrative efficiency, a 75% decrease in SAN, disk, and energy costs, which results in a decrease of the total cost of data by 50%.

Products & Services

• 3PAR Utility Storage Products include hardware, software, and thin technologies.
  • 3PAR InServ Storage Servers include "a high-bandwidth, low-latency backplane that unifies cost-effective, modular, and upgradeable components into a highly-available and autonomically load-balanced cluster." Software offerings include the InFormOperating System, the InForm Suite, and specific software products that enhance virtualization capabilities of their platform.
  • 3PAR thin technologies (i.e. just-in-time storage) improve storage utilization by eliminating capacity overallocation and reducing the need to dedicate storage on a per-application basis.
• 3PAR Utility Storage Solutions are delivered together with VMware and other virtualization services, as well as, optimized for platforms like Oracle, Microsoft, Linux, and Solaris. 3PAR also has IT solutions to cover areas such as data consolidation, recovery, and NAS.
• 3PAR Customer Services and Support