SNW-Europe took place earlier this month in Frankfurt and I am pleased to say that it was another very successful storage industry event, well attended by European IT professionals. Its success was mostly due to a conference agenda that allowed the many data storage industry constituencies, from vendors to users, to get an update on the usual hot industry topics but also to open attendees’ mind on broader and longer term industry issues such as the future of information management.

Amongst the main industry challenges, here are some of the most popular discussed topics in Frankfurt:

• Data Protection / Disaster Recovery: European storage users have repeatedly said it loud and clear that they cannot afford to miss business cycles because of data inaccessibility and/or inconsistencies. The DP/DR challenges are only increased by data growth, data type multiplication and regulatory compliance trends and as a consequence IT users are asking for more flexible and granular open DP/DR tools to place and protect information repositories at the right time, in the right location and on the right media.
• Security:
  In the world of data storage security issues are too often summarised as being a matter of data encryption (at rest). Whilst this is undoubtedly an important technology component for ensuring information security, it becomes clearer in IT users’ mind that the information security challenges entail a more comprehensive approach across management processes & IT layers. Security experts are helping the Storage community to understand the overall security management requirements and vice-versa. No doubt that further industry education is required in this arena.
• ILM: Bizarrely enough – or may be not -, ILM was not a topic as hot as it used to be in previous data storage related event. Don’t get me wrong: elements usually connected with ILM (Data classification, Data Retention/Archiving, Tiered Storage Resource…) are still being discussed by IT experts and challenged by IT users regarding their application in real business environments. But the “ultimate” ILM vision for information management magically aligned with business priorities is not so much advertised upfront anymore. IT users have confirmed they need a stepped approach here with relevant (business) proof-points. Good.
• IP-Networking for Storage: No surprise here… NAS & File systems technologies are
  gradually been considered as key infrastructure elements. iSCSI is increasingly gaining momentum with SMB/SME’s but also with the Enterprise, even if market projections through to 2008/9 are still conservative.
• Data Storage Management, Virtualization and Tiered Storage: Still sizzling hot… IT & storage users in Frankfurt have said it again and again: Data Storage Management is still perceived as too complex, not always flexible and not standardised enough. Virtualization and Tiered Storage management systems are steps in the right direction for simplifying and helping with targeted storage resource utilization.
• SMB/SME: This business segment starts to have Enterprise-like data management requirements without the equivalent financial and personnel resources. So what do SMB/SME need? Cheaper products with feature/functions similar to high-end gears? Easier access to data storage services? Less complex and easily deployable management tools? All of it? Besides any cost considerations, complexity seems to be the killing factor for many SMB/E’s when dealing with data storage.

Looking into longer term challenges, several SNW-Europe keynote talks - including those by Jon Toigo and Steve Duplessie - pointed at two critical issues:

• Is data/information natively stored in any meaningful ways to allow any management and business applications to leverage it directly? In most cases it is not and many extra software layers are required to add contextual data to data. So clearly that’s a complex area to review.
• Can Information be shared, distributed and utilised within and/or between enterprises whilst preserving its integrity and its consistency across application and business domains? Well many researchers are scratching their heads about this, and this goes beyond any data storage considerations into services management and business models. It is in fact a major discussion with the Service-Oriented Infrastructure community.

In my previous blog I had introduced the topics I intended to discuss at SNW-Europe about the potential alignment of SOA, Grid and storage management for future SNIA activities. The feedback from most conference attendees was positive and highlighted that the storage industry at large should better link its efforts with other IT layers to further integrate and coordinate information & infrastructure management tools. A direction that needs to be explored by SNIA and allies.
I would also like to highlight that SNW-Europe was the opportunity for the Storage Networking Industry Association Europe to thank a great industry leader and contributor when its Chairman (now ex-) Paul Talbut decided to step down from his leadership role.

I told you:
it was a thrilling event! I can’t wait for SNW-Europe 2007!

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