Leverage Cost-Saving Lifetime StorageTek Maintenance

The opportunity to save money on StorageTek maintenance is significant. Tape libraries and archival systems are not the most aggressively evolving systems. Their long average lifespans make third party maintenance service especially valuable in driving bottom-line impact.

The StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System, for example, was released in 2010 and yet still leads the recommendations on Oracle’s tape storage page in 2015. For good reason. The scalable capacity it supplied—reaching 100,000 tape slots—was among the features to cause industry watcher Charlie Isaacs to exclaim in a blog title “That’s a Lotta Data.”

Yes it is, Charlie.

An IT organization that purchased the StorageTek SL8500 five years ago likely still has it in operation today, and that will continue to be true for some time to come. Now consider that alternative StorageTek maintenance providers, such as Park Place Technologies, can deliver 40% to 70% annual savings off Oracle’s support contract costs. Over the lifetime of such a tape drive system, the cost differential becomes significant.

But Wait, There’s More

It’s one thing to shave dollars off the contract costs, but a whole different thing to give more value for the money. But that’s exactly what Park Place does. We offer a competitive package of StorageTek maintenance service that meets or beats that meets or beats the features of Oracle’s and other companies’ premium level of support. Cost-savings and quality improvements combine to give clients the best possible solution.

Key features include:

• Proactive maintenance to reduce problems. Every contract starts with an on-site systems analysis. We then check in quarterly to review trouble calls, answer questions, and ensure the support solution is working. And finally, clients are allocated engineering time in their agreements to handle non-break/fix issues and tasks. In other words, we’re on the lookout for problems before they happen.
• Responsive problem-response to minimize downtime. It’s impossible to completely eliminate failures, but Park Place responds quickly when issues do arise. We ensure 100% component coverage and full-service support. All of our support lines are answered by Level 3 engineers, so there is no escalation procedure to access the helpful support personnel you need. And we will send an engineer on site within guaranteed SLAs to get systems back online.
• Long-term commitment to extend hardware lifespan. It’s possible that the lifespan of a piece of StorageTek equipment could outstrip Oracle’s period of support for it. Not so with Park Place.