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