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Storage: Getting a Grip On Storage
On a survey of attendees of the UK Storage Expo ’09, 85 percent said that they would like their organization to get their data storage, information and content management and application out of silos and into an IT process that enables their organization to add value. Actually, I can’t see how the remaining 15 percent could have said no to that, unless their organizations are the exceptions that have already eliminated data silos.
The survey found that 75 percent of organizations keep their information management and data storage systems in separate silos. Steve O’Donnell, Managing Director of ESG’s (Enterprise Strategy Group) EMEA, gave advice for how companies can manage to break away from silo-ed data syndrome:
– O’Donnell notes that there is often a conflict of objectives within an organization around data storage strategies. The need to tightly integrate data with business applications, which may come at a cost, is sometimes at odds with the need to save money by centralizing and streamlining data management. O’Donnell suggests that the integration of data with business objectives should always have the highest priority, while the need to streamline costs should be a highly-weighted secondary objective.
– O’Donnell also comments that many companies don’t have a coherent plan in place for their IT applications and systems architecture, and because of that, those businesses suffer. The source of the problem is that departments and groups within the organization don’t have enough communication. Business, application development and infrastructure groups all need to be on the same page.
O’Donnell’s Recipe of Success is:
- Define an information and data strategy that addresses both structured and unstructured data, security concerns, privacy issues and regulatory compliance.
- Define the technical architecture that can make the strategy happen, including software, tools and infrastructure
- Evangelize the approach and win over financial and business decision makers within the organization to help back the plan
Sounds simple enough, but the hard part is executing on the details.
