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Aligning storage to business use case

Johannesburg, 16 Apr 2014
The software running on the storage array is what differentiates storage vendors from each other, says EMC Southern Africa's Delon Karrim.
The software running on the storage array is what differentiates storage vendors from each other, says EMC Southern Africa's Delon Karrim.

Each storage vendor has unique features to offer. If the customer and vendor work closely to understand how these features align to the business use case, projects generally run smoothly.

That's the view of Delon Karrim, senior systems engineer at EMC' Southern Africa's Advanced Storage Division, who points out that the majority of storage project failures are either related to not fully understanding what the storage system will be used for, especially regarding type of application or incorrectly sizing the storage.

In that vein, EMC Southern Africa and ITWeb are currently running a Storage Survey to understand the local storage vendor landscape; what influences decisions in choosing a vendor; and to get a feel for technologies organisations find necessary in their data centres.

"All storage platforms are based on the same disks from the same disk vendors. The software running on the storage array is what differentiates vendors from each other," says Karrim. "As organisations move to the third platform, their consumption methods will change, and will move towards object storage systems. IT departments will be competing with the cloud service providers and will have to offer alternative platforms if they want to keep their data on premise and not in the public cloud."

According to Karrim, in SA, many organisations still seem to be buying the brands they know. "Cost is a determining factor - the storage system cost as well as training people to come to grips with a different vendor if they were to change vendors."

He also believes that the majority of organisations in SA prefer to have their storage in-house. This is mostly due to privacy of the data, he notes.

"Their data is what differentiates them from their competitors. They see it as having more control when data resides on premise. The organisation can enforce its corporate policies and governance requirements as what is mandated by legislation of their particular industry," he explains.

Karrim also observes that the emergence of several niche start-ups is becoming more visible. "They have very specific use case offerings and more organisations seem to be evaluating these features.

"The 'software-defined' movement is also producing commodity-based hardware options, where the software will be more and more relevant. EMC, too, has software options to address the software-defined storage market."

He also believes that as organisations mature, there is added effort in their journey to become profit centres.

He points out that enterprises seem to increasingly be investigating showback and chargeback mechanisms.

"Many customers don't have tools in place to get visibility or provide visibility back to the business to determine their storage consumption. They rely on individual element managers but this is difficult as they are not able to get a true consolidated view of the environment," he says.

Click here to complete the survey.

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