The Storage Economist

Lots of people write about new year’s resolutions. I am not going to elaborate on my one, you do not want to read about them and I may not want to share them…

The New Year is a good time to pause and check/weigh strategic plans and efforts to the more tactical ones that tend to consume most of our time.

We are now 2 years (by some records) into a global down-economy. Many tactical efforts have been attempted: headcount reduced or frozen; capital expenditures frozen, thawed and frozen again; and implementing point storage solutions that can save money (backup, VTL, archive, de-dupe). But we are not done. By most accounts, the global econ strain will continue through 2010, and beyond to some extent. Short term options are running out, or soon to run out their course. Tactical options, doing one after the other, are diminishing.

For those of us that have endured unemployment for any amount of time, we can recognize short-term efforts to stretch the family budget that we implemented. There are many to choose from and apply. But if the cash flow has not returned, we have to sit down and make some harder choices that require a clear-head, less emotion and that  produce tangible results.

I see companies in this strategic and longer-term-hunkering-down mode now with regard to IT budgets, and stretching the IT dollar in a tough economy. Short-term tactics have worked (to some extent), but since data growth does not necessarily react to negative economic factor, capacities have to increase, as does efficiency, power usage, maintenance costs, labor costs etc. 2 years down, how much longer and deeper do you need to plan?

I advise many customers on developing a storage strategy, or standards-based architecture, or catalog. There are different names for different types of plans (documents) that can be created, and when properly thought-out and implemented, can set a better course for CAPEX and OPEX management. The strategy or architecture these days can take on multiple themes:

• Extending virtualization in servers, storage, networks, desktops
• Enable tiered solutions, with different SLA and price points
• Metrics, metrics, metrics. We cannot improve what we cannot measure
• Usage, consumption, priority of resources (machines, people)

I wrote a paper five years ago on developing and setting storage strategies and architectures. It is a little out-of-date, but the principles still apply. Download the paper here.

You might consider a strategic plan or catalog or architecture as we start this new year. Planning for more tough CAPEX and OPEX waters ahead will need more than short-term tactical steps. It might be time to hunker-down for the long-haul plans within your IT organization.