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When it comes to mission critical IT,
EUR
there are no short cuts
SNIA
By Juergen Arnold, Chairman, SNIA Europe, www.snia-europe.org
COMMENT
Dear SNS Europe reader,
John F. Kennedy once said ‘There are risks and costs to a human intervention. By removing the manual element it will be
program of action, but they are far less than the long-range possible to reduce mistakes and reduce associated costs. In
risks and costs of comfortable inaction.’The current economic addition, automation creates the very positive byproduct of
situation and the uncertainty that seems to be holding its hand, increased productivity, thus effectively giving back available time
has led many organisations to review their spending across the to the IT/storage administrators to focus on other aspects of the
board. Not surprisingly IT is one of the areas that has suffered environment.
cut backs on proposed purchases and increased pressure on
the existing resources. Naturally, one of the most effective ways to measure the value of
any server and storage investment is through its ROI; by
However it is important to understand that although it is considering the impact that upgrades, new solutions or policies
possible to reduce CAPEX and OPEX this should not be at will have on the IT strategy and even on the organisation overall,
the expense of company longevity and performance. Even in will help with the decision-making progress. It is important to
difficult times, the stability of the business processes and of the ensure that the storage architecture will be suitable to support
supporting IT infrastructure are critical, even more so than in future businesses requirements: scalability, openness, flexibility and
less challenging times in fact, because the organisation must reliability are just examples of the features to look for in new
prepare itself to successfully weather the market conditions. products.
The first step is to identify how mission critical your It might take many month for a new storage infrastructure to
applications are and if necessary invest in the right pay back for itself but during this time the organisation will
server/storage solutions to allow them to cope with their load operate safe in the knowledge that it is ‘business as usual’ despite
in the coming months and therefore continue to support the the troubled waters it might be floating in.
business.
Secondly, it is strongly advisable to consider automating tasks Juergen Arnold,
within the storage infrastructure; many errors are due to SNIA Europe, Chairman
FEB 09 WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM
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