Gaining Maximum Value from Information and Data

 Mid-sized organizations have similar issues to large organisations when it comes to the storage and management of information and data, yet they often have limited capability to attract, retain and maintain the skills that large organizations will use in managing their data assets. There is a strong need for more effective tools that will enable mid-sized organisations to manage their data assets and gain the greatest value from them.

• Mid-sized organizations face many of the same storage problems as large organizations
  Storage volumes continue to grow at a rapid rate, and mid-sized organizations need to be able to meet this growth in a fully manageable manner. Existing heterogeneous storage approaches with a mix of direct attached storage (DAS) and shared folders on servers do not provide the flexibility and opportunities required for ongoing market competitiveness.
  
• Storage management needs are similar for mid-sized and large organizations
  Business continuity, disaster recovery, and data archiving are all major issues that mid-sized organizations have to deal with. With existing storage being spread across a range of different data silos, it is difficult to respond rapidly to data loss; and the impact of data loss or non-compliance with information governance requirements can be catastrophic to a mid-sized organization.
  

• Storage area networks (SANs) are the optimum solution for managing such needs
  SAN technology has been proven as a strategic solution in large organizations, and a SAN approach offers several advantages to mid-sized organizations. The abstraction of the storage layer means that response times are more predictable and upgrading storage is more flexible and does not impact the running of the business.
• High-end SAN skills are at a premium
  SANs based on Fibre Channel (FC) technology require specific skills for implementation and ongoing maintenance. These skills are not easily available within the mid-market, and a perception of complexity and high cost has grown up around the usage of SANs outside of the largest organizations.
  
• IP-based SAN storage brings SAN capability within the reach of the mid-market
  By utilising standard Ethernet-based technology, IP-based SANs lower the skills requirement for the implementation and running of SANs, making them a prime solution for the mid-market. Bringing high-end SAN functionality into the reach of the mid-market yields direct business value through higher storage utilization rates, less downtime, greater storage flexibility and the capacity to report across multiple data stores in an easier manner.
• Virtualization provides functionality for flexibility
  The capability to create a single virtual view of all storage assets, combined with the capability to use logical partitions to provide flexible “buckets” of storage for applications, allows for high levels of flexibility for organizations.

Conclusions
SANs help to create a very flexible storage solution that provides a high degree of future-proofing for an organization’s storage needs. However, existing perceptions of complexity and high cost have historically relegated SAN technology to only a few companies with large IT budgets in the mid-market. The advent of IP-based SAN technologies and the combination of standard Ethernet-based SAN connectivity with the decreasing cost of storage components now provide mid-sized organizations with the capability to easily enter the SAN world. For those who choose a solution complete with management tooling around virtualization, partitioning, provisioning, backup/restore and so forth, IP-based SANs will provide immediate business value and higher levels of efficiencies and effectiveness in their market.

Introduction
Data growth shows no sign of slowing, and the increasing use of new data types (particularly voice and video) is stressing many organizations’ approach to information storage and management. The need to integrate an organization’s information into a single resource pool, rather than as discrete pools of information, is growing faster than the underlying storage rates. Also, the speed of storage system response, reporting and data recovery degrades as the volumes of data grow. With these main worries for mid- sized organizations, it becomes clear that carrying on as we are is not a real option. Data retention laws mean that it is increasingly difficult for an organization to minimise the amount of data and information that it stores, yet the business demands that the information required for decision making is easily and rapidly available – and action has to be taken now, before the problem gets any worse.