Data surge needs storage refitting, industry experts say
Data explosion in recent years is challenging the way executives handle storage issues.
Industry experts are saying the exploding amounts of digital information and the so-called “information economy” will require a fresh, more holistic approach to storage, industry experts told Network World at the recent Storage Networking World conference this week.
Chuck Hollis, a global marketing CTO at EMC, an information infrastructures company, was quoted in Network World report as saying, “Information is fast becoming the world’s ‘single most valuable asset.’ As such, it’s important to oversee the entire information portfolio, understand where it’s being stored, how it’s being used, and to stay out of trouble by complying with all security and data retention regulations.”
Hollis spoke at said conference in Dallas, hosted by Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association.
Hollis also predicted that consumers are going to demand even more detail about their personal information and where it’s being stored, and will want as much control over that information as they have over their personal finances.
This scenario is seen to bring about a new way of handling digital information, according to Hollis. “Just as businesses employ a CFO to make money, save money, and stay out of legal trouble, enterprises will need an executive focused on the risks and rewards of handling digital information. I’m starting to see more and more CIOs that see their job the same way, but around information.”
According to EMC’s Digital Footprint Calculator, more than 369 exabytes of information have been created since the beginning of 2008, more than double the amount in all of 2006. In good economic times and bad, data creation is growing by 60% each year, according to Hollis.
Madge Meyer, executive vice president of State Street Corporation in Boston, who also spoke during the conference, said her organization acquires 40TB of new information each month.
Richard Austin, IT industry consultant, for his part said the burden is falling heavily on storage administrators, specially in securing all this information. “The information that has become the crown jewels of the modern enterprise is completely coming under the control and responsibility [of storage professionals],” he said.
Because of data growth and power consumption, businesses are spending more on storage each year even as costs go down on a per-byte basis.
Diane Bryant, vice president and CIO of Intel, said her company predicts it would double its storage spending by 2012. “It’s daunting,” Bryant said. “That type of growth is ‘not something we have the ability to maintain or support.’ This is unsustainable.”
Bryant lists a number of contributors to the increasing information that enterprises are compelled to store, including the increasing complexity of devices, electronic forms of collaboration, the proliferation of the Web as a business tool, and all types of regulations.
Bryant shared what Intel is doing, saying they are creating information lifecycle management policies for all its data, which describe how quickly data must be accessed, how long it must be maintained, and when it should be deleted. Intel is also working on virtualization and thin provisioning, Bryant said.
Also among Intel’s initiatives include cutting costs by using storage tiers, saying not all applications need ultra-fast access to information. Bryant said Intel devotes to solid-state disk the applications that need the highest performance and reliability, while optical tape is set aside for bulk storage.
Speaker Jack Domme, COO of Hitachi Data Systems, said there are roadblocks that prevent optimal handling of data, including aging equipment, lack of mobility, low storage utilization rates, among numerous others. Domme added business executives wanting spending cuts complicate the matter.
Costs can be trimmed down significantly by improving data mobility with storage virtualization, use of thin provisioning and lower-cost storage tiers, as well as de-duplication and archival of ‘stale’ data that is rarely accessed, Domme said.
Wayne Adams, an EMC official and chairperson of the Storage Networking Industry Association told Network World, “It’s also crucial not to store redundant copies of data.” He said this requires a close accounting of data and metadata with tagging and search capabilities, allowing all copies of a given piece of data to be deleted at the end of its lifecycle.
Casey Powell, CEO and president of Xiotech, however, said while many of these measures can be installed immediately, he predicts a complete face-lift of how storage is organized and allocated in the coming years.
According to Powell, applications themselves must be able to control their own storage resources, automatically provisioning and de-provisioning storage as needed.
“We need a system that is integrated to the point that the application, in conjunction with the operating system, controls its own destiny,” he said, adding that this will reduce the potential of human error and let storage pros focus on higher-level tasks. At the same time, Powell acknowledged that creating applications that can control unstructured data is particularly difficult.
Powell also said that allowing humans to control the system makes it cumbersome to the point where it will not probably work. Some applications are self-provisioning storage today, but wholesale changes will take time, he added.
When asked for more details on how application-controlled storage will work, Powell replied, “In 2020 we can come back here and see what’s actually happened. The reality is we start small. … We’re not going to do a massive, across-the-board change in a short period of time.”
