Strategy Considerations for 2016 – Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

This article Strategy Considerations for 2016 has been writtent by Randy Kerns, senior strategist and analyst, Evaluator Group, Inc.

There are many ‘trends’ for the next year that are usually defined by vendors and their promoters in information technology, but the reality is that in almost all cases, trends are really just a continuum – evolution of what is in progress already. In addition, for storage technology change occurs relatively slowly because of the high stakes. Information is the lifeblood of organizations and they avoid putting it at risk with unproven technology or products. Proving a technology with deployments leads the progression of incorporating technology into storage strategies by organizations.

Given Evaluator Group’s unique position in working with IT clients, resellers, and vendors, we can provide insight into the storage technology evolution necessary to consider in strategies for 2016. These are strategic because they provide value both in the ability to address needs for storing and managing information and continue progress in improving economics and delivering services.

There can be many detail developments discussed, but here, the focus will be on the major considerations for strategic developments.

1. The use of storage is in transition.
Last year we talked about accelerating applications and virtual server environments with all-flash storage. The economics of flash storage have continued to change as well as the understanding of the value that comes from improving application performance. Now the strategic consideration is to transition all primary storage to all flash systems. This simplifies the environment by reducing the complexity of systems and in performance management decisions. The movement to solid-state storage is inevitable given the technology progression. Moving critical applications to flash storage is the next step in this progression and many organizations are already well underway with this transition.

2. Deploying an online content repository for data
without high performance demands is another strategic consideration.
There is a very large and growing amount of data that needs to have online access and a content repository that can scale to massive capacity and number of files or objects is a long-term solution. Some organizations have implemented this using object storage systems with support for file access and capable of expansion to a two-tier system or for data protection to a public cloud or to a tape library. There are some vendors that narrowly define solutions such as online archive, but the solution is really a strategic answer for increasing capacity demand, recognizing the different needs for access to information.

3. The movement of front-end applications focused
on use of mobile devices to clouds for execution changes many IT operations
and the effect must be part of a strategic plan.
Managing contracts and verifying availability, security and protection are additional tasks. From a storage standpoint, movement of data between on-premises operations and clouds is a critical operation. There is also a change in data placement – what data is needed where. This may allow a faster transition to all flash primary storage and allow even greater consolidation for more efficient operation.

4. Almost all information technology operations
continue to struggle with data protection.
The capacity growth experienced by most breaks the protection practices. New approaches are a strategic consideration essential to maintain the protection in an effective and efficient manner. Already, maintaining catalogs of snapshot copies are in use for primary data. Direct backup or movement directly from the storage system to the backup device under control by the application and application administrator is a developing area. In conjunction with deploying a content repository, using remote replicated copies of immutable data with versioning changes the protection method for less active data. Addressing data protection is a necessary strategic consideration to cope with increasing volumes of information.

5. The initiatives to deliver resources on demand called IT as a Service or ITaaS
is probably the most important strategic goal for many organizations.
This change or transformation of IT is usually described by the capabilities of cloud service providers and called private or hybrid cloud deployment but is really about services on demand with the desire to mimic the economics of hyperscalers as part of the change. This results in parallel IT groups within companies: a group to continue the current business critical operations – keep the business running, and another group to build or buy the new private/hybrid cloud environment. From a storage strategy standpoint, the use of commodity storage elements and independent storage function software (over-marketed as software defined storage) should be considered in evaluations. The Open Storage Platform or OSP may be the most viable approach for this group in the parallel IT organization.

These strategic considerations for 2016 are not about trends and certainly not from a vendor promoting their product. They are areas Evaluator Group recommends to include in the strategic plan for storing and managing information. Many organizations are already progressing on some of these but most are not. Considering these and developing a plan is essential to succeed in the future as the industry evolves.