#EnterpriseStorage has never been cheaper or easier to provision than it is now. But that does not mean it no longer presents a challenge to the enterprise.
Storage is a good example of the catch-22 that most enterprises find themselves in these days: The easier you make things for users, the tougher it gets for managers.
The Rise of Integrated IT Infrastructure Systems: Top Enterprise Use Cases
Storage has never been cheaper or easier to provision than it is now. But that does not mean it no longer presents a challenge to the enterprise.
Indeed, with storage infrastructure now distributed across the cloud and line-of-business managers capable of creating virtually any type of storage they need for a given task, the sheer diversity of media, formats and standards is making it extremely difficult to even come close to a unified, federated storage environment.
But that does not mean it is impossible. To get there, the enterprise will have to seek out innovative new ways to oversee both data and infrastructure.
For one thing, says Computerworld’s David Spark, you can target specific storage-related issues like latency and availabilityrather than shoot for the moon with an all-encompassing management approach. In this way, you can ameliorate the key issues affecting users while at the same time streamlining processes on the back end. As well, there is a lot to be said for consolidating compute and storage infrastructure under hyperconverged footprints and then implementing a robust metadata layer that will aid both manual and emerging automated management functions. In a broader sense, however, the sooner the enterprise replaces the current piecemeal deployment of storage with a more strategic approach, the sooner it will be able re-exert control over its data.
