Storage tone: what networked storage can learn from consumer product goods - Storage Networking

Computer Technology Review, Jan, 2003 by Alan Kessler

By making systems more intuitive and self-healing, businesses can re-focus their resources onto mission-critical projects to reduce costs and improve productivity and business continuity overall.

Affordable Storage

Affordability is another crucial piece of the network storage puzzle. Solutions should be affordable, appealing to the broadest possible audience.

New network storage solutions will reduce the overall cost of storage, including hidden costs such as human error and user training, to offer high -end, enterprise-class functionality without breaking the bank. Without having to plan days in advance, shut down the network and perform the many steps outlined above to carry out everyday management tasks, this new class of solutions will require fewer human and technology resources. Instead of having IT departments focus significant amounts of time on these mundane tasks, users will be able to spend their time on more business-critical and strategic operations.

Furthermore, less training will be required to learn the ins and Outs of the system, allowing customers to use their time to improve the business. By developing products built on established industry standards, such as IP, off-the-shelf equipment can be used and existing resources leveraged, enabling the industry to ride the wave of high volume, commodity components.

By offering more affordable solutions, users will be able to save on the overall costs of storage. Lower-priced solutions with enterprise-class functionality such as snapshot and remote mirroring of data will compliment higher-end solutions without costing an and and a leg. Many businesses find themselves either storing most of their data and files on one or several expensive, high-end storage solutions or, more often, under-protecting the vast amount of reference data within the organization because it is not managed using network storage solutions. While these high-end storage options are reliable, this method is not always the most effective or efficient. While some of the data and files that reside on these storage systems are "mission critical," typically most of it is not. In fact, there is a very large percentage of enterprise data that, while not mission critical, is considered mission important. These types of data include email and email attachments, static Web content, manufacturing lists of part n umbers, and stored images, for example. In these cases, the information that is not as important can bog down the network, hindering it from functioning at its highest capacity.

With the advent of smarter, more affordable solutions, businesses will be able to transfer their huge amounts of mission important information to these more intuitive and easier-to-use options, freeing up higher-end storage products to tackle the organization's most mission-critical data. By doing this, businesses will see a better yield on their ROT without sacrificing any of their data storage capabilities.

Storage: The New Network Resource

Enterprises want and need to reduce IT spending, simplify storage management, realize a faster return on their IT investment and ensure the highest possible levels of system availability and performance. This new class of smarter, more affordable and intuitive network storage solutions addresses these issues through a fundamental shift in the way network storage solutions are developed. Moreover, such systems will free critical IT resources from detailed routine tasks, allowing them to focus on managing critical business processes.