Future vision for data storage?

EMC Corporation's, Mark Lewis, executive vice president of Open Software, used a speaking opportunity at this week's Storage Networking World Fall 2003 to outline his view of the future for computer data storage.

"In the next three years we will see more change in the storage industry than in the past decade, with the industry rapidly evolving and embracing information lifecycle management,” he stated. “A typical large company today has hundreds of applications, terabytes of online information, even a petabyte of data on tape. But there's virtually no ability to optimally match the value of specific information at any given point in time to the type of storage resources managing it. Information lifecycle management will result in the optimal management of information throughout its life, from creation and use to archiving and disposal."

"In addition to matching storage resources to the value of data at any given point in time, a successful information lifecycle management strategy must be business-centric, tying closely with key processes, applications, and initiatives," Lewis added. "It must be centrally managed and anchored in enterprise-wide information management policies that span all processes, applications, operating systems, and resources while providing an integrated view into all information assets, both structured and unstructured."

"The largest productivity gains from storage investments are found in those businesses that view storage as infrastructure," Lewis continued. "As such, the most enlightened organisations have advanced their view of storage from a stovepipe model that's deployed over and over again with each new application, to an infrastructure that can be deployed once and used over and over again. This, combined with a focus on information lifecycle management, will reduce the time and labour needed for integrating new applications, increase the organisation's flexibility and responsiveness, and address the overall management of information in a consistent and systematic manner.

"When it comes to reducing costs all the ‘easy’ cards - eliminating headcount, cutting projects, deferring upgrades - have already been played. The next frontier for cost savings has to come from improvements in the process of managing information itself - a process that hasn't really changed in the past 30 years. Information lifecycle management is a new approach to managing information based on its changing value over time. By aligning the resources applied to protecting and managing information to its changing value, businesses can eliminate inefficiencies in resource allocation, simplify management, and lower cost - while actually increasing the ability to meet service level commitments and compliance needs."

www.emc.com

•Date: 30th October 2003 •Region: N.America/World •Type: Article •Topic: IT continuity
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