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Enron Mail |
FYI: Several errors like 'brokering' in the report but given the fact that
the guy had no clue what Enron does or companies like it do, this came out okay. In all of the PR group's marketing effort, Enron as a Market-Maker is the message. Ravi. ----- Forwarded by Ravi Thuraisingham/Enron Communications on 02/05/01 10:54 AM ----- Shelly Mansfield 02/05/01 10:49 AM To: Ravi Thuraisingham/Enron Communications@Enron Communications cc: Subject: Computerworld Article Shelly Mansfield Enron Broadband Services 713-853-4589 office 713-646-8887 fax 877-929-7889 pager 713-303-4720 cellular ----- Forwarded by Shelly Mansfield/Enron Communications on 02/05/01 10:51 AM ----- Norman Levine 02/05/01 10:08 AM To: Shelly Mansfield/Enron Communications@Enron Communications cc: Subject: Computerworld Article Following is the Computerworld Article: Link: http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/stories/0,1199,NAV47-68_STO57177,00.html Enron seeks to broker storage deals between users, SSPs By LUCAS MEARIAN While technology service providers have long been talking about data storage as a utility that should be sold in the open marketplace like electricity or natural gas, little has been done to pool market resources in order to hawk surplus disk-array capacity. But that's exactly what a subsidiary of Houston-based energy and communications conglomerate Enron Corp. is doing by launching a business-to-business exchange that it said will seek to match spare capacity owned by storage service providers (SSP) with corporate users who want to be able to quickly scale up and down the amounts of storage they have available. Enron Broadband Services this week announced that it has already signed a deal with Waltham, Mass.-based StorageNetworks Inc. and is negotiating similar agreements with at least six other SSPs. If successful, analysts said, Enron's business proposition could go far toward generating a set of operating standards for the emerging SSP business. "It's a market with mix of small and large players and companies that define their roles differently," said Ken Weilerstein, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. Enron's plan also could help enterprise-level users get additional benefits along with the storage capacity they're renting, such as security and disaster recovery support, he added. Ravi Thuraisingham, director of global bandwidth risk management at Enron Broadband Services, said the new offering won't include additional security features. But Enron does plan to standardize on a set of SSP services and bundle them with disaster recovery and communications bandwidth capabilities, he said. Initially, Enron -- which had total revenue of $101 billion last year -- expects to charge users monthly fees of $25 to $55 per gigabyte of managed storage, depending on market conditions and the length of time a company expects to need the capacity. "We're there to try to discover a market clearing price," said Thuraisingham, adding that the service is tentatively due to go online in the third quarter. Enron said it has already signed Best Buy Co., one of the leading retailers of consumer electronics, computers and software in the U.S., to buy the storage capacity it needs to support a customer relationship management application through StorageNetworks. Connecting users such as Best Buy to available storage could take anywhere from three days to three months, according to Thuraisingham. Under Enron's plan, storage capacity owned by participating SSPs will be connected to an existing network of switching hubs through which the company currently trades telecommunications bandwidth. Enron said it has 18 switching centers, or "pooling points," in the U.S., and another seven overseas. At first, the company plans to focus its attention on SSPs in Boston and other metropitan areas where the necessary networking plumbing can be easily installed. But even there, Thuraisingham said, Enron is "pretty much in the initial stages of getting SSPs up to speed on what the market is about." Enron has been managing online trades of telecommunications bandwidth since the spring of 1999. Later that year, it also launched a Web site called EnronOnline that oversees the trading of natural gas, electricity and other commodities. That quickly became the world's largest e-commerce site and is now said to be processing more than $1 billion worth of transactions daily. Norman Levine Enron Broadband Services 713-853-5010 norman_levine@enron.net
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