Through its partnership with Computer Associates (CA), Smart Storage Technologies (SmartStor), local end-to-end storage solution provider, can now provide its customers with a storage "health check" facility. Using CA Storage Resource Manager, SmartStor can help a business maximise its existing storage, lower administrative time and resources, optimise storage performance and manage capacity efficiently.
"As data growth continues to explode beyond all expectations, CIOs and other storage professionals are wondering when this rapid development is going to stop," says Tony Life, executive director of SmartStor. "If you have 500GB today and your data growth is increasing by only 50% each year, you'll be managing nearly 4TB within five years," he explains. "This is wonderful news if you're selling disk and tape solutions, but a potential logistical and financial nightmare if you are the user."
As businesses are already beginning to discover, managing storage effectively and efficiently is all that is required. Throwing more hardware at a problem may not be the best answer.
Life's concern is that too many organisations are spending unnecessarily on hardware and software to manage data growth without actually understanding whether the disk already in use is being properly utilised. "Too often, IT people tell us that extra capacity purchased could easily have been found on existing disk if the data had been better managed."
As the only certified CA high-end, enterprise storage VAR in South Africa, SmartStor's health check offering can be performed as a once off or on an ongoing basis, although Life maintains that the ongoing model is the better selection.
"As your storage growth continues and software and hardware purchase decisions need to be made, SmartStor will be in a better position to advise on the best solution because we will have obtained a clear understanding of your business objectives, rather than purely responding to an RFI or RFP that focuses only on technology," he concludes.
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