Email this page to a friend

Print this page

Submit feedback on this page

Home Vision Public sector issue 02 What's in store for storage?

What's in store for storage?

Neill Burton, Computacenter's Datacenter Solutions Director, explores how optimisation and an integrated approach can help increase utilisation and decrease costs

With organisations producing 60 per cent more unstructured data every year, there’s one area where the IT spending axe can’t fall: storage. Optimising organisational investments in more effective data storage and assorted management has never been so important.

Although optimisation solutions, such as virtualisation, data de-duplication and compression etc, are helping IT departments increase their storage utilisation rates, there’s no avoiding the upward spiral for both data volumes and costs.

As well as generating more data through media-rich applications and multiple end user devices, organisations also have to store data longer to meet their regulatory obligations.

With the demand for storage capacity set to intensify, organisations need to find an optimally strategic approach to cope with this growth. Identifying the right approach, however, is a challenge in itself.

Integrated approach demands shift in culture

With storage spend in EMEA increasing by 14 per cent every year, the market players are all vying to position their version of storage nirvana. Although the vendors believe the future of storage lies in integrated infrastructure stacks, many CIOs are not yet ready to take the leap. The scope of this challenge potentially increases further for CIO’s as they endeavour to optimise service outcomes and costs across disparate storage solutions.

These optimised ‘containers’ take the form of pre-packaged virtual datacenter (VDC) solutions, encompassing not only storage but also processing power, connectivity and management software.

In addition to being highly scalable, VDC solutions invariably include a range of storage optimisation technologies, such as automated tiering and grid storage, which help increase utilisation rates to more cost-effective levels.

Although VDCs can help to stem the tide of storage spend, their integrated approach turns the IT function on its head. Instead of managing servers, software, storage and networking via individual teams and processes, IT departments will be forced to take a unified cross-functional approach. This is a massive cultural and operational change, which must be addressed before embarking on the VDC journey. It also requires all parties to abstract themselves from the technological layers and approach this as an overall outcome perspective.

Faced with a myriad of other pressures, many CIOs opt to stick with what they know: more storage tin. However, they need to invest wisely to ensure these assets don't end up on the storage scrapheap in a couple of years’ time.

Future-proofing storage investments

As with other emerging technologies, the integrated VDC approach to storage will eventually go mainstream. Organisations must therefore ensure that the hardware they purchase today can integrate with the solutions of tomorrow.

The new VDC world of storage is currently dominated by three enterprise platforms and vendor coalitions: Exadata (Oracle and Sun); Vblock (Cisco, EMC and VMware) and FlexPod™ (NetApp, Cisco and VMware), with more holistic approaches from IBM with their DI or CloudBurst and HP’s Matrix message.

As a result, many CIOs are investing their storage budget in interoperable solutions that position themselves closer to VDC. Solutions such as EMC Data Domain, EMC VNX, and NetApp ONTAP.
Mid-range virtual solutions, such as IBM Storwize V7000, are proving a popular and affordable choice.

These technologies offer compelling benefits in their own right as well as easing the journey towards the world of integrated storage. For example, independent surveys have shown that EMC Data Domain delivers an average return on investment of 264 per cent with its de-duplication attributes.

Evaluating savings and strategies

CIOs not only need to prove that similar savings can be realised by their business but also understand the current state of their storage environment.

With utilisation rates often as low as 30 per cent, IT departments may be able to delay or avoid hardware purchases by optimising their existing storage assets and processes.

By working with an independent and experienced delivery partner, CIOs can quickly identify the optimisation opportunities within their organisation and establish a cost-effective storage roadmap – whether it involves VDCs or not.

Getting the storage equation right is not only essential for controlling costs but also safeguarding business continuity, agility and compliance. Make the wrong investments now and organisations will pay the price in the future with higher costs and lower flexibility.

Find out more about Computacenter's Storage Assessment Service