State Of Enterprise Storage: Changing Priorities, Changing Practices
A $499 VALUE
Underwritten for a limited time courtesy of Symantec.
IT, it seems, is always in a state of transition, responding to evolving business challenges, vetting new technologies, and seeking innovative ways to maximize what we already own. Storage is no exception. Out in 2009: The treadmill of piling on capacity to keep up with data growth. In: A considered management strategy that takes into account everything from data security to environmental concerns to disaster recovery and is in lockstep with the evolving needs of the business. Sure, adding more capacity and I/O performance as the organization demanded it was an easy approach over the past decade or so. But the hangover has finally hit in the form of massive amounts of money, power, and data center floor space maintaining storage systems that all too often house data that, at best, isn't useful to the organization and at worst represents a liability in terms of potential litigation.
Now, the challenge is breaking our addiction to the "disk is cheap" ethos. Moving from simply meeting all storage demands to actively managing business unit requests is immensely complicated, but it must be done. Some enterprises have begun figuring out what they're storing, classifying its value according to policy, then deleting unneeded data and relegating rarely used files to less expensive storage. Yes, this requires organizational buy-in and is a "personality-intensive" process that no technologist relishes. But if you haven't started on this path, there's no smarter resolution.
InformationWeek Analytics surveyed 328 business technology professionals at North American organizations to gain insights from business technology professionals into the challenges and trends around data storage, options for management, and new technology capabilities. The survey was fielded in conjunction with Byte and Switch.
Download Report, underwritten for a limited time by Symantec.
Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Research Synopsis
- Petabyte Blues
- Multiplying Drivers
- Security Top Of Mind
- Hard & Soft Wares
- Plans For 2009
- Some Scoop On COOP
- Not So Trendy
- Shrink It
- Forecast: Not At All Cloudy
- Appendix
About the Author
Steve Delahunty is a senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading strategy and technology consulting firm. Steve has more than 20 years of professional technology experience and currently provides IT program management for Department of Defense clients. He is adjunct faculty at George Washington University in the computer science department and a board member of ByteBack, a nonprofit community training center in Washington D.C. Formerly, Steve was vice chair on the board of directors of the Network Professional Association and a member of the Network Computing editorial advisory board and Rochester Institute of Technology Academic Curriculum Advisory Group for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
Steve is a regular technology conference speaker, panel member, and moderator as well as a contributing editor for InformationWeek Analytics and sister publications. He earned a Bachelor's in engineering from Lafayette College, an MBA in technology management from the University of Phoenix, and is working toward a Master's in information technology from Harvard University. He holds multiple IT industry certifications.
About the Sponsor
Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help our customers—from consumers and small businesses to the largest global organizations—secure and manage their information-driven world against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently. As the world's fourth largest independent software company, our unique focus is to eliminate risks to information, technology and processes independent of device, platform, interaction or location. Our software and services protect completely, in ways that can be managed easily and with controls that can be enforced automatically—enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored.
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