Rabbets and his partners, Matthew Wiltshire and Richard Russ, set up Source Consulting with a view to bringing relief to such companies. The trio hail from Ideal, a storage distribution company bought by Bell Microproducts last year. Source now has 40 on staff and expects to turnover £24 million ($34 million) next year.
Source wants to become Europes number one storage services business within three years. And at the rate its racking up big-name customers, this looks entirely possible. Bloomberg, Marks & Spencer, Jaguar, LIFFE (London International Financial Future Exchange), and Cantor Fitzgerald (a commodities broker) are on the books, as well as several big retail banks.
Source says it differs from the big IT consultancy companies such as KPMG or Arthur Andersen LLP because its devoted solely to storage.
Theres so much confusion out there with smoke and mirror marketing by NAS and SAN vendors who deliberately blur the boundaries of what they can and cannot do, along with a general ignorance on the end-user side, it's a recipe for disaster, rabbits Rabbetts. Source helps folk see the wood for the trees by auditing their storage infrastructure, he says.
Time will tell whether this outfit can match up against the major consulting firms but it seems to be getting to the source of the problem.[ed. note: Bugs Bunny is 61 years old today. Happy birthday, you wascally wabbit!]