GlassHouse Technologies starts 2006 with momentum from a fistful of successes in 2005 that include high-profile customer wins, new service rollouts, and recognition from a top analyst that named it one of the top three companies in the storage professional services market. With storage providers anticipating the highest percentage revenue growth coming from managed services and consulting, according to Gartner Principal Research Analyst Adam Couture, GlassHouse is well positioned as the leading provider of objective storage consulting advice.
“Business processes are becoming significantly more data and information intensive every year, and as that intensity increases so does the demand for strategic consultation on how to deal with it,” said Enterprise Strategy Group Senior Analyst Tony Prigmore. “Companies that have established themselves as trusted providers of technical and strategic knowledge will be in great demand as storage continues to evolve from a departmental process to an enterprise process.”
GlassHouse gives companies a coherent view of their data management procedures and plans the infrastructures for strategically managing data to contain cost, increase profits and meet regulatory requirements. The company provides consulting on storage business practices; storage management; and data protection along with offering support services. GlassHouse serves more than 600 companies in every major industry, including financial services, insurance, retail, media, biotechnology/pharmaceutical, telecommunications, government, legal, oil and gas, manufacturing and technology.
The company signed deals in 2005 with several household-name companies, including CitiCard, Virgin Mobile, UBS, JP Morgan Chase, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Reed Elsevier, and Cummins, Inc. GlassHouse expanded its partner network by signing an agreement with Hitachi Data Systems to offer an expanded suite of business consulting and implementation services to customers in North America and the United Kingdom.
GlassHouse’s successes over the past year prompted Gartner Inc. to name GlassHouse one of the top three companies in storage professional services, along with IBM and EMC. Storage publication Byte and Switch named GlassHouse one of its 2005 Top 10 Private Companies for the third time recognizing GlassHouse’s insights into the industry’s progress. GlassHouse conducts periodic surveys on issues such as storage spending and data security. The latter survey revealed that more than half of the respondents had no policies in place to protect data from theft or tampering. In another 2005 contribution to the professional services industry’s development, GlassHouse joined 16 other companies in launching the Technology Professional Services Association, the first national industry group dedicated to supporting professionals who create, deliver, and manage technology in the world’s leading corporations.
To help service the growing demand for its services, GlassHouse added several veteran technology industry executives to its senior management team. GlassHouse Senior Vice President Dave Ellard came to GlassHouse from four years as senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) at EMC, bringing with him a deep history of managing complex IT environments and dealing with the issues of managing cost, risk and client satisfaction. GlassHouse Technology Services Director Paul Hammond brought a strong background in the important oil and gas market to GlassHouse, with 20 years of IT and critical project delivery experience with diverse companies such as Halliburton, Shell and Kvaerner. GlassHouse Vice President of Corporate Strategy Lars Linden came to GlassHouse with 15 years of IT management experience in multi-national finance and insurance industries. He was most recently at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) where he was responsible for the enhancement and maturation of infrastructures services.
“2005 firmly established us as an independent company able to transcend the differences between and limitations of vendor-specific solutions. In that way, we’ve been a resource to customers and to vendors who want to offer their customers an unbiased voice in their strategic technology issues,” said GlassHouse CEO Mark Shirman. “We’ve devoted resources to identifying the major storage issues facing customers through programs like our online surveys, and have turned that knowledge into new offerings such as our Storage Security service and Compliance Readiness solutions. Customers can expect even more storage services momentum from us in 2006.”
About GlassHouse Technologies, Inc.
GlassHouse is the leading provider of independent services that help organizations solve the business problems of enterprise storage. From strategy through implementation, operations and customer support, GlassHouse partners with clients to achieve predictability and manageability in storage operations, enabling cost control, risk mitigation and increased service levels. GlassHouse clients include UBS, Exxon Mobil, Charles Schwab, Virgin Mobile, and The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. More information about GlassHouse is available at www.glasshouse.com.
