For some years, business and technology managers have been faced with the inevitability of constantly ballooning storage resource requirements. Data continues to be created at an unprecedented pace and legislative measures, requiring that information must be stored and kept accessible for specified periods, have been introduced.
Companies are under pressure to establish infrastructures that can cope with existing requirements and scale to meet unpredictable future needs.
Of course, managers are also faced with the challenge of escalating costs. Their storage solutions must handle copious quantities of data, yet offer simplicity and affordability.
Vic Booysen, EMC operations manager at Business Connexion, notes: "Cost and complexity are two factors that confront the IT manager on a daily basis. Even though the cost per megabyte is consistently coming down, it is difficult to balance resource requirements against budgets."
The accumulation of masses of data means managing storage is a further challenge, he adds. While information lifecycle management (ILM) has become an accepted strategy for optimising data storage on the most affordable medium - depending on how protected and how accessible that information has to be - it is a strategy that requires appropriate expertise and knowledge," he says.
Within this demanding context, he says an on demand model is increasingly emerging as the optimal solution to address corporate storage requirements. With this model, resources are provided on an ongoing basis, which addresses the needs of the business without interruption or the requirement to engage in lengthy procurement and implementation procedures.
"Changing storage from an outright purchase to a service model offers many benefits. It takes the cost of resources off the balance sheet, turning it into an operating expense. Businesses are not faced with the issue of suddenly discovering that storage resources are running low, as provisioning can be done to ensure there is always sufficient capacity available," he says.
Additionally, Booysen says that with the establishment of its storage on demand model, Business Connexion has applied the principles of ILM - delivering the appropriate devices, policies and protection for various categories of data.
"The value of information ranges from that which has to be near-line and almost immediately available, through to that which has to be retained but can sit in an inexpensive archive device. By using the storage on demand model, clients benefit from an ILM strategy without having to specialise in this discipline," he explains.
Resource utilisation is also optimised for clients - they pay only for the storage capacity that they are using.
"The principles of managed services apply in this context. A specialist takes over the responsibility for a non-core function that is nevertheless critical to business success, optimises the environment, and brings the benefits of economies of scale to clients. It is a proven model, the value of which is increasingly apparent to South African businesses," Booysen concludes.
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