While most IT departments would argue that they try and assess storage requirements accurately, industry pundits have a differing view--a large number are still not getting it right.
Undoubtedly, pinning down actual storage requirements is a task many CIOs and IT managers don't fancy. As market researcher Meta Group once said: "Calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO) for storage systems is a complex accounting exercise that few IT organisations perform beyond the need to justify product purchases."
As complicated as it may seem, planning for storage is a task technology departments can't avoid. Phil Sargeant, research director for Servers and Storage at Gartner Asia-Pacific, suggests assessing storage needs on an application-by-application basis, and recommends IT departments look at three key aspects:
- Performance characteristics required from storage technologies.
- The length of time the information needs to be retained.
- The restoration/recovery period in the event of a failure.
And the buck doesn't stop there. Manson Yip, technical trainer for Adaptec Asia-Pacific, says before investing in storage, IT departments should calculate how much the data is really worth.
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"As part of the assessment process, companies should also plan their storage in a hierarchical model--strategic, tactical and operational," Yip said. "Classify the type of data required--whether it's centralised or distributed--and it's value, and then draw a conclusion."
Yip believes that before leaping in and investing, IT managers or CIOs needs to consider issues such as their industry, historical data requirements, and the data needs of the wider business. He said tech departments should also look at four other issues:
- Consider immediate storage needs.
- Survey current and anticipated storage patterns.
- Consider the variety of options available.
- Ensure clear responsibility is assigned when storage decisions are initially made and reviewed over time.
"By taking a structured approach to storage, companies will benefit in the long run," Yip said.
So, what exactly drives the planning process? Industry observers say there are often catalysts that prompt tech managers to look more closely at the planning processes for an organisation's storage requirements.
Grant Smith, Tivoli Software Storage group manager at IBM Australia, said cost control is a typical driver that prompts IT managers to focus more on planning.
"Typically [we're] seeing customers growing the amount of storage by 50 [to] 100 percent each year," Smith said.
Getting it right
With IT departments now having an even greater concern for the bottom line, the pitfalls of not spending enough time planning storage
requirements can have serious consequences.
StorageTek's Russell Findlay speaks of the classic issues displayed by a government department customer.
"The organisation had documented its file and print data as being 750GB, growing at 30 percent per year," Findlay, practice manager for Strategy and Architecture at StorageTek Australia/New Zealand, recalls.
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The organisation finally discovered that the figures were meant to be 3.5TB at a 103 percent growth rate per annum, which eventually translated into a budget shortfall of AU$25 million for servers, software, storage and networking over a three-year period.
"With more carefully planned storage, this customer saved AU$15 million in infrastructure costs over the three years, and also improved business workflow and reduced outages and helpdesk calls worth AU$9 million per year," Findlay said.
Findlay added it was important to remember that these savings were scalable; for instance, if an organisation moves data from expensive primary storage to cheaper tape archiving. He cited the following as typical indicators of insufficient storage planning within an enterprise:
- Reliance on a single strategy.
- Uncontrolled data growth.
- Excessive focus on buying based on price without addressing the reasons for the exploding growth.
- No "ownership" of specific storage issues, such as capacity planning, data recovery, and data architecture.
- Asking the question, -when was the last time you audited your data?", and getting blank stares from staff.
Space jam
Tighter budgetary constraints has also led to a need for enterprises to pinpoint which departments are heavy users of the company's storage resources.
Although IT managers want to make data owners accountable for their storage usage, this doesn't necessarily mean individual departments will be invoiced for their usage, IBM's Smith observed.
-The driving force for accountability should be to better understand how IT storage costs relate to specific lines of business," Smith said.
He added that while decisions on data importance were often made by the application owners, IT managers still had a say in the matter. -Sometimes the application owners will put unrealistic requirements on retention and priority that can't be met within a reasonable cost...[so] it is the focus of the IT group to temper the application owner's desire with a dose of reality as to what can and cannot be accomplished."
-The goal should be to bridge the gap between the IT department and the line of business so that effective, affordable solutions are implemented," Smith said.
Legal eagle
Making sure that users are storing data in the right places, and saving what needs to be kept, are among the issues IT departments continue to
grapple with.
StorageTek's Findlay believes the mismanagement of data, which has led to corporate collapses, has been a catalyst for increased interest in compliance.
-It is clear that governments and investors are not happy with the previous information management practices (or lack of) and are demanding information assets are stored correctly," Findlay said. -Terms of seven or even 10 years are common in information strategies now, and include the security, availability and long-term retrieval of data assets."
Likewise, Gartner's Sargeant sees the requirements varying depending upon the industry vertical. He uses the example of the financial sector, where vigorous disaster recovery plans are often required.
Privacy may also be a factor in how companies store some information, such as how personal information is retained and who it is accessed by, notes Phillip Hourigan, a partner in the digital industries group at law firm Deacons.
While Hourigan believes CIOs are beginning to understand the importance of storing and retrieving information from a regulatory perspective, he said they still have to convince management that this IT spend is mission critical.
And since the world is so unpredictable, the need to be able to access data four or five years down the track is crucial, Hourigan added.
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