FLAG, GlassHouse sign pact for storage biz

FLAG Telecom Group, a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, today announced the signing of a bilateral agreement with US-based GlassHouse Technologies, an independent IT infrastructure consulting and services firm providing managed IT services directly to enterprise customers.

Punit Garg, chief executive officer, FLAG, said: "GlassHouse provides a new suite of services that will complement FLAG's existing hosting capabilities. The partnership enables FLAG and GlassHouse to offer a multi-vendor remote storage services suite with an unmatched reach at lowest Cost of delivery to the enterprise market."

Under the agreement, FLAG Telecom and GlassHouse will jointly provide remote fully managed storage services including remote monitoring, reporting, and management of customer environments.  GlassHouse's solutions and services, independent of the manufacturer of the storage platform, are constructed at a detailed level to enable them to become part of FLAG Telecom's standard solutions portfolio. In addition, FLAG and GlassHouse will continue to jointly develop new storage services complementing the existing services suite.

Mark Shirman, chief executive officer, GlassHouse, said: "The partnership with FLAG is core to our managed services strategy.  We are excited to combine FLAG's state-of-the-art infrastructure with our managed services capabilities to create a compelling, competitive service offering."

FLAG will resell GlassHouse's managed storage services as part of a new suite of hosting services.  GlassHouse is expanding their infrastructure operations center (IOC) to include the FLAG campus in India. The IOC will be continually staffed by FLAG employees in a managed service outsourcing relationship and provide significant operating cost reduction.

The partnership agreement, signed initially for a period of three years, would enable both FLAG and GlassHouse to effectively target the storage services space estimated to be worth over $30 billon (Rs 1,20,000 crore) by March 2008.