ITworld.com recently caught up with Joe Clabby, Vice President, Practice Director: Storage and Server Strategies at Summit Strategies, Inc. He authored the new report "Staring Down The Storage Sinkhole". Here's his perspective on what's hot in storage and where organizations should focus their energies.

Where should end users focus their attention?

Clabby: The hot topics in storage right now are Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and consolidation/virtualization/provisioning. I call this CVP.

ILM deals with the management of an enterprise's content -- relegating it to different levels of storage based upon its value to the enterprise as well as on compliance requirements. Consolidation, virtualization, and provisioning all deal with attacking the storage management issue. Consolidation helps IT buyers get a handle on the storage they own. Virtualization treats all storage as a pooled resource (helping to increase utilization rates while also helping IT administrators better manage storage). Provisioning (which means greatly different things to different people) essentially has to do with automating storage activities by using policies, procedures and rules to allocate and manage storage.

If I were a mid-sized or large enterprise, I'd focus on these two issues. The storage management issue is particularly important because CertMag says that storage administrators now average around $100K per year. Now think about it, if I add X# of storage devices, I'm going to need to add a storage administrator for every 10, 20, or 50 devices (depending on the management tools I have at my disposal). Storage is growing exponentially -- so something has got to be done to stem the tide of having to hire an exponential number of people to manage storage. Better storage management could help enterprises save millions...

What must users ask potential vendors before purchasing these technologies?

Clabby: For ILM, potential buyers should look very closely at the vendor's content management software.
For consolidation, virtualization, and provisioning, prospective buyers should look at the vendor's professional services organization. Check to see that the vendor has performed CVP; what software they used; how much it costs for the software and services.

Buyers should also ask "does your product enable me to virtualize and manage both my server and storage devices?" I don't think IT buyers really want separate storage, server and network management schemes with separate interfaces. I think they want one consolidated view of their IT resources -- all addressed from a common graphical user interface. Buyers need to consider the whole picture if they are to implement dynamically responsive IT infrastructure -- not just the storage management chunk.

Do you have any best practices worth sharing?

Clabby: IBM is probably the storage market's leading supplier of virtualization solutions. I like their packaging (Search on "Virtualization Engine Suite for Storage") and I like their service offerings. I'd recommend that people check out the solutions and services -- and then use those as a base-line to compare with the best practices of other vendors.

Any specific advice for small/medium sized businesses?

Clabby: Yes. Most small and even some midsized businesses have limited technical resources. They tend to know where their storage is -- and how much they have. But they tend to know this because they manually search around for storage -- or use rudimentary tools. As the world evolves toward dynamic computing environments in which applications dictate what their processing and storage requirements are -- and where IT systems simply respond to service requests -- it is going to be important that small and medium business owners learn about the concepts of consolidation, virtualization, and provisioning. Right now, focus on education. Over the next three years, focus on implementation (as storage CVP tools become more sophisticated and affordable).

For more information, contact:



Summit Strategies, Inc.

Joe Clabby's bio

storage.itworld.com

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