Trouble Sleeping? Here’s What Keeps Storage Pros Awake at Night.
By
Ken Male
CEO & Founder, TheInfoPro
Storage professionals have a lot on their minds these days as they work to keep their companies’ most important asset running without disruption. From rapidly developing technologies to major changes in government regulations to vendor consolidation, there are a myriad of questions that keep even the most accomplished storage pros awake at night.
We at TheInfoPro (TIP) have an ongoing dialogue with hundreds of storage professionals from North America and Europe through our bi-annual, in-depth studies of the Storage Networking and Storage Management markets. In preparation for the next wave of interviews we asked TIPNetwork participants: “If you were asking the questions, what would you ask your peers?”
Their questions highlight many of the issues that can make slumber difficult, including:
• Archiving—What regulations are driving this and what applications are the priorities? What are the best solutions emerging for this?
• Distance needs, especially Disaster Recovery & Business Continuance—How is this causing a change in the storage architecture and what technologies are being deployed?
• Virtualization—Has its time finally come? Is this functionality users want built into a switch, in band or out of band via an appliance-based approach?
• Storage Management—Do current solutions “over promise” and bring about “agent overload” to the network, thereby degrading performance? What is the timing to implement a solution from an outside provider versus staying with a hybrid of home grown tools and vendor “point” products? Lastly, how should management products be priced? Many vendors have different models and not many seem efficient or cost effective.
• IP Based SANs—Are these ready for prime time and what applications will be best suited for them?
• Disk to Disk for Backup—Is tape replacement viable and what technologies (i.e., Serial ATA) are enabling this? Are users more interested in Virtual Tape (serial mode) or using Disk as a native device and storing backups in parallel?
• File Systems—How realistic is a single file system image to be used for the entire SAN?
• SAN & NAS—Are companies integrating the two and what architecture is most effective for this (i.e., Unified Gateways)? What applications seem best suited for NAS in light of “smart startups” developing specific solutions?
• Use of Startups—Why buy or not buy from them? Would you use them in-line?
• On Demand—Are there plans for this with storage and/or the entire computing infrastructure? How would this be best implemented and what organizational changes would need to be made?
For Wave 3 of TIP’s Storage Study, over 250 TIPNetwork enterprises will be interviewed at length about these and many other questions. All participants receive the results, which they rely on for vendor selection, negotiating leverage, peer benchmarking, and, perhaps, a better night’s sleep. If you are interested in participating in Storage Wave 3, please contact Andy Gibs at 212-418-1357 to discuss the criteria or email agibs@TheInfoPro.net
Ken Male is Founder and CEO of TheInfoPro. He has over 15 years of experience working with technology users, vendors, and investors. He has worked with IT providers and market research firms like Gartner, DEC, Giga, and most recently Jupiter where he was SVP of Global Sales. To learn more about TheInfoPro visit: www.TheInfoPro.net.
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