Bangkok--4 May--Core & Peak
Business Issues:
1. Increasing pressure to align IT and business - IT costs are escalating due to increasing demands for data and information. CIOs will be under greater pressure to justify IT investments based on business value rather than cost avoidance. An example of business value would be - faster turn around in a business process that could result in higher revenue or increased profit.
2. Business continuity. Every CEO fears the loss of company data, time and revenue in an emergency. Ensuring all files are backed up and kept safe in a separate location is of paramount importance, and this will be borne out in 2007 as more and more organisations put business continuity plans into place.
3. Economic uncertainty. Organisations across the globe will continue to face a fragile environment of economic uncertainty in 2007. Budgets will remain tight, but businesses must avoid the trap of allowing this to restrict their growth. Business managers should plan for all eventualities, but make sure they have the capacity to allow their organisation to expand next year.
4. Increase in regulation. The number of regulations companies must comply with is multiplying, creating exponential growth in the amount of data that needs to be stored. While organisations might consider this to be a thorn in their side, they should see it as an opportunity to mine and manage their most important asset.
5. Mergers and Acquisitions — the trend for mergers and acquisitions among companies across a range of industries is likely to continue in 2007. This adds complexity as CIOs integrate the different IT infrastructures. Using a vendor which offers common management across heterogeneous storage devices will help in this instance. It will also alleviate the problem of different IT Skills in the IT department which can be an inhibitor to an efficient and easy integration.
IT Issues:
6. More small and mid-sized companies will consolidate — when a company has multiple storage devices the management of Direct Attached Storage (DAS) can be difficult. The answer is a Storage Area Network (SAN) or Network Attached Storage (NAS) where the server goes through a switching mechanism to reach any storage device. One network, one language and one back-up procedure. This is the basis of consolidation and there is likely to be a continued trend towards consolidation among small companies.
7. Environmental issues and green computing will play an increasingly central role in CIOs’ project and budget planning. With climate change set to remain a hot topic, IT departments will need to demonstrate to other areas of the business, investors, customers and their industry that they are doing their utmost to reduce power consumption while optimising the management of mission-critical company data. Reducing equipment lifecycle by investing in scalable hardware will also become an important consideration.
8. Information Lifecyle Management (ILM) will become a redundant idea. The idea that information loses value as it gets older has been around for many years now, and is at the heart of the storage industry’s concept of ILM. However, in an environment where the most important piece of information a company holds is the answer to the CEO’s next question, and compliance demands mean these questions can be about data that could be years old, it will no longer be enough simply to move information down the storage pile. CIOs will need to ensure data can be accessed quickly and easily, no matter how old it is.
9. Dynamic IT — Analyst firm, IDC, coined the phrase to describe ILM plus the bits others don’t deliver…
10. Virtualisation goes mainstream. As storage needs become more complex, CIOs will be keen to ensure their organisations are able to meet requirements while driving down costs. This means that the ability to optimise existing storage area networks through virtualisation will continue to be a key concern for a gowing number of IT departments in 2007. While various storage vendors are developing virtualisation capabilities, Hitachi Data Systems will remain the only provider with a viable offering.
11. IT departments will increasingly see the value of deduplication technology. As IT budgets come under scrutiny from from other business areas, any cost-saving approaches to data management will become essential. With the potential to dramatically reduce the capacity used for file back-up, and therefore storage costs, de-duplication will become a priority for a growing number of organisations.
12. Security hots up. Whichever industry, a company’s employees will continue to use a multitude of applications. It is the CIO’s responsibility to ensure the data supporting these applications is secure but still easily accessible when needed. With increasingly strict rules governing data security, and penalties for improper management, getting this balance between security and usability right is going to have a place near the top of the priority list.
13. IP storage will become a popular support for network attached storage. As storage needs become more complex at both an SME and enterprise level, methods of simplifying data management will be in great demand. By transporting block-level storage over an IP network, CIOs will be able to maximise existing resources and extend their geographical coverage, creating a much more efficient architecture.
14. Web 2.0 brings a data explosion. The year ahead will see web 2.0 companies continue to stake their claim in the market. As the cost of storage capacity continues to fall, companies will compete with each other for customers by offering free capacity as an incentive. This in turn will lead to a boom in information saved online, increased by the growing popularity of sites hosting user-generated content and email services where all user data is saved online instead of on the PC. This will mean emerging web 2.0 companies will need to ensure they have an effective storage strategy in place from the beginning.
For more information please contact:
Srisuput Siangyen
PR Manager
Core & Peak Co., Ltd.
Tel: +(66) 2-439-4600 ext. 8300
Mobile: +(66) 81-694-7807
Email: [email protected]