Hospital Attaches LeftHand: Page 2 of 3

In addition, Pelot found LeftHand's price point, which was far lower than any of the traditional SANs he had looked at, very appealing. He won't say exactly how much he's paying for the six NSMs he currently has, but he says it's about half the 2.5 to 3 cents per Mbyte he's paying for raw EMC storage on his two Clariion boxes. "I don't think anyone on the market can meet LeftHand's price."

Almost immediately after he saw the demo, Pelot signed an informal beta agreement with LeftHand. "This was such a cool idea, that we were willing to do whatever it took," he says. "I wanted to be their first customer."

He got his wish. As LeftHand's first beta customer -- and later, its first customer -- Pelot had at least some small influence over the development of the NSM. "They showcased some potential colors for the prototype, and one was bright yellow," he says. "So I asked, 'What does that mean -- that it's under construction?' " LeftHand took the hint, and the NSM today is the same color as the rest of Denver Health's data center: dark gray.

While he thought LeftHand's technology was great, Pelot needed an immediate solution, and he wasn't about to shift all of Denver Health's critical data to a product that had barely been tested. "I wasn't going to bet my job on it," he says.

To tide him over, Pelot bought 5 Tbytes of storage on two EMC Clariions, a 4700 and a CX600, where he now stores all of his clinical data. Then, about a year ago, he started migrating all of Denver Health's business data to LeftHand's NSMs. The migration, he says, was very simple -- much easier than installing the Clariions. "Setting this thing up has been incredibly easy," he enthuses.