| QUESTION & ANSWER |
SD2002: Duplessie on why profitability rules |
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By Kate Evans-Correia, Senior News Editor
15 Aug 2002 | SearchStorage |
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What's the big deal about storage as a utility? If you're a storage administrator under the gun by your top guns to turn your department into a profit-maker, you know what the big deal is. Money.
Steve Duplessie, founder and analyst with the Enterprise Storage Group, Milford, Mass., and a speaker at the Storage Decision 2002 conference being conducted next month in Chicago, talks to Senior Editor Kate Evans-Correia about how profitability is a key driver for storage administrators and offers insights into how to become a profit center, not a cost center.
What's the big deal about storage as a utility?
Duplessie: IT is a cost center. Cost centers tend to be tactical, not strategic. If we turn IT into a profit center it instantly becomes strategic.
What's the cost benefit? And when can it be realized?
Duplessie: It will require a retooling of not only technology but the way IT thinks. Every transaction should be profitable. The key is to truly understand the cost of delivering very specific service levels — by application, user community, line of business, etc. I think within five years everyone is going to be on board.
Is this the direction you believe most companies will follow?
Duplessie: They have to. The economy has turned sour and being a cost center is way uncool.
What will be the driving factor to make this move?
Duplessie: Money. You make money, you get whatever you want. You take money, you get diddly.
| | | | "You make money, you get whatever you want. You take money, you get diddly." Steve Duplessie | | | |
Name three things a storage administrator needs to do/think about before making the move.
Duplessie: 1. Understand exactly where you are, what you have, and why.
2. Reset expectations to senior management — what can you deliver and what you can't. Don't let misconceptions continue. If it ain't good enough, someone has to belly up some dough.
3. Build a top-down strategy — understanding that everything you do moving forward has to fit into a "this-will-make-money" model.
How will this model affect software management vendors?
Duplessie: The operational software management players are critical ingredients to making this happen. Automation becomes critical as well.
Duplessie will also go more in-depth about storage as a utility at his session titled " Considerations for Building a Storage Utility - Bring IT to a Profit Center." For a detailed summary of Duplessie's presentation and look at the conference agenda go to the Storage Decisions Web site at Storage Decisions 2002 conference this September in Chicago.
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