Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
How do you keep your IT team up to date with all the advances in storage technology?
In an environment where storage technologies change virtually month-to-month, trying to keep your IT team trained to help your business benefit from the advances is a losing proposition.
Once you recognize that storage technologies are incredibly dynamic, that there are no universally deployed standards, and that the interoperability between manufacturers' equipment is little more than marketing spin, you quickly understand the self-inflicted complexity that the storage networking world produces. You understand, just as quickly, that one inappropriate choice for your storage solution can put you at a competitive disadvantage from which you may never recover.
Eventually, the storage market will settle out somewhat, certain technologies will prevail and clearer standards will emerge. It is doubtful if your business can wait for that to happen. Until then, every IT department must evaluate the technical expertise of its staff and the reasonableness of training its people to correctly deploy every newly implemented storage technology crossing their path.
An alternative is to utilize the expertise of Storage Service Providers (SSP) companies who make it their mission to be at the forefront of storage technical innovation. SSPs have great visibility into all the storage manufacturer's roadmaps and are now gaining "traction" to influence the development of the technology.
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Outsourcing your storage needs to an SSP is an option to gain instant IT resources that are up-to-date and fully trained in all aspects of storage applications.
About the author: Greg Mangold is the vice president of marketing at Creekpath Systems, Inc.
This was first published in February 2001
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