Ammo for the bean counters

By Alan Earls

While the cost of a gigabyte of storage continues to drop, the overall cost of storage remains high. Indeed, as enterprise storage grows in size and complexity it is taking a growing share of many IT budgets. It is that factor which can make for budget battles. So, it is nice to know that at least one expert -- Analyst Graham Penn with Framingham, Mass.-based IDC -- is on record as believing it is all worthwhile.

In a recently issued report, "The Growth in Importance of Storage," Penn predicted that storage will become increasingly important and will probably come to be seen as one of the primary assets of the corporation.

He wrote, "The real value of the storage resource to the organization is not related to its direct or even its indirect cost. Without precedent in the IT industry, the value of the storage infrastructure will be greater tomorrow than it is today, providing it is managed as a key organization asset and not regarded as a high but necessary cost. Information availability to users within and without the organization will be the critical indicator of the success of the organisation's storage management efforts."

Penn went on to name three key tasks storage must address: uptime, recoverability, and reliability. Failure, he predicts, will have enterprise-wide consequences.

To accomplish these newly important goals, Penn said that organizations would have to develop new thinking - by putting

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storage at the forefront of their decisions. Penn added, "The emerging enterprise storage networks will enable organizations to extend the benefits of consolidated enterprise storage in the data center across the entire enterprise."

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About the author: Alan Earls is a freelance writer in Franklin, Mass.


This was first published in December 2000

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