There was a time when the most pressing need of any IT manager could be described in the single mantra of 'bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth', but greater data transfer capacity may no longer be the requirement that first springs to mind.
The growing size and technological diversity of corporate networks has made a rival to the fat pipe the new top priority Ã, the fat bucket.
Organisations increasingly need to store large amounts of data which can be quickly accessed. The result, according to research from many technology vendors, is that storage area networks (SANs) are rapidly becoming the new must-have for network managers.
The difficulty for SAN vendors is not in convincing IT managers about the benefits of SANs, but in helping IT managers to persuade financial directors of the benefits, so that spending will be approved. This could be particularly problematic if the economic downturn in the US spreads, and leads to more cautious spending in Europe.
This is one of the reasons why SAN vendors are currently so keen to trumpet the cost benefits of SANs.
Currently, no more than 10 to 15 percent of UK corporates are thought to have SANs. IT managers trying to justify setting up the system will have to offset long-term savings against the initial purchase and installation costs. Given the current slowdown in IT spending in the US, and increasing pressures on IT budgets in Europe, this could be hard. Even with some heavy creative accounting, it is clear that a SAN is unlikely to generate sufficient benefits to pay for itself quickly. And the current economic climate is unlikely to encourage the money men to spend now in the hope of reaping rewards in the distant future.
SAN vendors realise that companies are likely to cut back on their capital expenditure, and SANs will undoubtedly slip down the list of priorities for infrastructure improvements.
Until spending restrictions are eased, there are number of steps that IT managers can take to consolidate their existing storage capacity. One approach is to archive less important or seldom accessed data onto storage media such as tape, or port applications onto cheaper networked attached storage (NAS) systems. Given the importance of messaging and email in corporate communications, one step that is not recommended is to impose heavy-handed restrictions on email. It could be a costly mistake to impose low limits on the amount of data that can be held in users' mail boxes on mail servers, so that once the limit is reached, further incoming mail is automatically deleted until housekeeping is performed.
Any steps in this direction should be taken carefully. It is important to note that however good a filtering system or firewall may be, users generally have no control over the messages they receive, and junk mail is peppering mailboxes with increasing regularity.
