Modernize Enterprise Storage
Current and emerging storage technologies are disrupting the status quo – prepare your infrastructure for the exponential rise in data and its storage requirements.
- Current storage solutions are nearing end of life, performance or capacity limits.
- Data continues to grow at an exponential rate, and management complexity is growing even faster. Some kinds of data, like unstructured data, are leading factors in the exponential growth of data.
- Emerging storage technologies and storage software/automation are disrupting the market and redefining the role of disk arrays, including how storage aligns with people and process.
- Storage infrastructure budgets are not satisfying the exponential growth of data.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Start with the data, not storage. Answer what is being stored and why before investigating the where and how of storage solutions.
- Governance and archiving are not IT projects. These can have tremendous benefits for managing data growth but must involve the larger business.
- More capacity is not a long-term solution. Data is growing faster than decreasing storage costs. Data and capacity mitigation strategies will help in more effective and efficient infrastructure utilization and cost reduction.
Impact and Result
- It’s about the data. Start with what is being supported and why. Decide on what and how data is stored before you decide on where. Let the needs of your workloads and governance requirements of your business drive your storage infrastructure decisions and the technologies you adopt.
- Identify current and future capacity needs for current and future data drivers. Evaluating the ability of current infrastructure to meet these needs will help you discover necessary additions to meet these requirements.
- Identify governance requirements and constraints that exist across the organization and are specific to workloads. Technology has to conform to these requirements and constraints, not the other way around.
- Align people and process with technology changes. To effectively utilize the changes in storage, appropriate changes must be made to existing people and process.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
10.0/10
Overall Impact
$25,000
Average $ Saved
5
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Guided Implementation
10/10
$25,000
5
Collaborative discussion with colleagues and guidance and expertise from Info-Tech
South Carolina State Ports Authority
Guided Implementation
4/10
N/A
N/A
Wavestone US
Guided Implementation
10/10
$12,733
2
Both Daryl and John were great. Very knowledgeable and both responded to both general and specific questions in an appropriate manner.
Workshop: Modernize Enterprise Storage
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Identify Business Case and Assess Current State
The Purpose
- Identify a business case and need for storage modernization by assessing current and future storage needs.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A clear understanding of the business expectations and needs of storage infrastructure.
Activities
Outputs
Identify current storage pain points.
- Alignment of storage modernization with organizational pain points
Discuss storage modernization drivers.
- Desired outcomes of storage modernization
Identify data growth drivers.
- An understanding of growth impact across drivers
Determine relative growth burden.
- An understanding of capacity and expansion needs
Module 2: Review Governance and Emerging Technologies
The Purpose
- Review existing data governance.
- Explore emerging technologies and trends in the storage space.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Review data governance objectives that must be met.
- Identify a shortlist of storage technologies and trends that may be of interest.
Activities
Outputs
Shortlist interest in storage technologies.
- A starting point for research into new and emerging storage technologies
Prioritize shortlist of storage technologies.
- Expressed interest in adopting storage technologies
Identify solutions that meet data and governance needs.
- A list of storage solutions needed to deliver on future data and governance needs
Module 3: Identify Storage Needs and Develop Initiatives
The Purpose
- Identify the people, process, and technology initiatives required to adopt new storage technologies.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Align your organizational people and process with new and disruptive technologies to best take advantage of what these new technologies have to offer.
Activities
Outputs
Complete future storage structure planning tool.
- A understanding of the future state of your storage infrastructure
Identify storage modernization technology initiatives.
- Technology initiatives needed to adopt storage structure
Identify storage modernization people initiatives.
- People initiatives needed to adopt storage structure
Identify storage modernization process initiatives.
- Process initiatives needed to adopt storage structure
Module 4: Build a Roadmap and RFP, Calculate TCO
The Purpose
- Develop an executive communications report.
- Conduct a TCO analysis comparing on-premises and cloud storage solutions.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Communicate storage modernization goals and plans to stakeholders.
Activities
Outputs
Prioritize storage modernization initiatives.
- Alignment of people, process, and technology with storage adoption
Complete project timeline and build roadmap.
- Communicate storage modernization goals and plans to stakeholders and executives
Compare TCO of on-premises and cloud storage solutions.
- Compare cost of on-premises and cloud storage alternatives
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 6 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Build the case for storage modernization
- Call 1: Develop the case for modernizing storage
- Call 2: Assess current infrastructure capabilities for meeting data needs
Guided Implementation 2: Develop storage technology needs and goals
- Call 1: Review data governance and emerging storage technologies
- Call 2: Identify current and future storage needs
Guided Implementation 3: Communicate roadmap and RFP
- Call 1: Discuss process and people initiatives, and develop and communicate roadmap
- Call 2: Develop an RFP and conduct TCO
Contributors
- Alastair Cooke, Chief Video Officer, vBrownBag
- Andrew Fling, VP Marketing, ioFABRIC
- Antonio Romeo, EMEA Presales Director, Dell EMC
- Darryl Levesque, Director of Technology Solutions, Kanatek
- Enrico Signoretti, Independent Analyst and Blogger, Juku Consulting
- Jim O’Reilly, President and Owner, Volanto
- Steve Lamb, CEO, ioFABRIC
- Trevor Pott, Systems Administrator, eGeek Consulting
- 10 anonymous contributors
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