Managing storage is becoming increasingly more difficult as the amount of data is exploding with the Internet of Things and as that data becomes more critical. Many companies are finding that they need to transition to the cloud or virtualized storage, and the rate of adoption is rapidly growing.
The “Managing Storage: Trends, Challenges and Options (2013-2014)” report by EMC, a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver information technology as a service, outlines the key challenges for IT/storage mangers in companies of all shapes and sizes. The report surveyed more than 1,000 IT professionals across 800-plus organizations on their companies’ storage infrastructure, the challenges they face and how they are preparing for those challenges.
The top six challenges faced by IT/storage managers, according to survey results, are: managing storage growth; designing, deploying and managing backup, recovery and archive solutions; making informed strategic/big picture decisions; designing, deploying and managing disaster recovery solutions; designing, deploying and managing storage in a virtualized server environment; and addressing the lack of skilled cloud technology professionals.
Solutions to the Challenges
If you read this list and can relate to these issues, Expedient is ready to help as we offer storage solutions and also have the knowledgeable staff to manage it for you as well. Expedient’s storage options include Shared Managed SAN and Evermore. So which storage option is right for you? Shared Managed SAN is beneficial when your business is seeking a solution tailored to your data storage needs, above and beyond when performance is required or when spending capital for a new SAN is not prudent. By utilizing Expedient’s storage area network management service, you can purchase disk space as you need it without a large upfront investment. Storage area network management allows companies to function in a financially responsible pay-as-you-grow model rather than a “build it and they will come” concept.
Expedient’s Evermore cloud storage solution is a low-cost storage plan and best used for archival storage or storing high amounts of data that will not be frequently accessed. Evermore provides businesses with a distributed, redundant, geographically diverse, low-cost cloud storage platform that can be accessed via API or through a NAS gateway device to store large amounts of archival data. Evermore may be right for you if you need a simplified, low-cost storage plan that can be accessed via the Internet, your business has a warehouse of rarely accessed data that qualifies for long-term archival cloud hosting and/or you need to free up resources from your Tier 1 or Tier 2 storage platform.
No matter what storage solution is right for you, the EMC report is clear that storage is a big concern for many companies and is a large driver for the virtual platform as the amount of critical data stored by companies grows.
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