– is this the start of storage becoming ‘just’ a subset of the data centre – or can we expect a new wave of storage innovation?


AI personally believe a new wave of innovation in many aspects of storage is bound to happen, driven by the


demands for more and more capacity. The increasing usage of SSDs (Solid State Disks) mingled with the larger ‘capacity optimised’ disks to produce high performance for large volumes of data is one example of what is happening now. Disks are going to continue getting bigger and not much faster, so further innovation will be essential to overcome the physical constraints of the new hardware.


Q What’s happening in the world of virtual storage?


AVirtualisation has allowed us to better manage heterogeneous storage with less waste, improved availability and easier data mobility – in other words as a business commodity like any other. The current steps are aimed at making this much easier to administer and ‘smarter’ such that the virtualisation layer in a datacentre takes care of data tiering and performance automatically. In the future, I think we may expect to see other functionality incorporated into the virtualisation layer such as data reduction techniques.


Q Is the virtual/cloud world the only logical path for storage and IT more generally into the future?


AVirtualisation certainly is. Cloud, as a means of gaining simplicity and economies of scale, is unique and for many


clients it will be the way forward for some or all of their compute and storage workloads. However, there will be clients for whom other issues will take precedence and cause them to continue providing their own storage and compute facilities, in this context private cloud is very important along with the next generation of autonomic service management features and sophisticated analytics to better manage the whole IT estate. Of course, cloud computing is not the last word in storage - continual change and improvement are inevitable. However, cloud is bringing a new and interesting way to manage data and process from which we will learn and progress.


Q Where are end users in terms of The Cloud and IBM at the moment?


ASpecifically storage cloud is in the early adoption phase. A number of cloud features however have been in widespread


use by IBM clients for sometime (virtualisation, automated provisioning, etc). For various technical and physical reasons public storage only clouds have some specific use cases (archive, backup retention, file serving, etc). Other storage capabilities are best provisioned close to the servers (transactional environments, backup) for low latency and high bandwidths needed. Hence we have a number of IBM clients who are planning or piloting these facilities.


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Q What have been the most recent IBM storage developments?


AA number of significant developments have taken place over the past year.


The consolidation of a number of key enterprise class features into a new mid-range storage array – the IBM Storwize V7000. This device incorporates our SVC storage virtualisation technology with all it’s higher functions, EasyTier sub-LUN automated tiering and enterprise RAID functions from out DS8000 series.The simplification of management of a number of systems by the introduction of new GUI designs based on out best of breed XIV management console. The IBM System Storage DS3500 Express which enables smart management of information and capacity growth without added complexity. By providing midrange performance and attributes at entry level prices, the DS3500 storage system helps companies deal with the “information explosion” – one of the top three factors expected to impact organisations over the next five years, according to leaders of midsize companies in the 2010 IBM CEO Study. IBM’s System Storage Easy Tier® feature which uses ongoing performance monitoring to move only the most active data to faster solid-state drives (SSDs), which can eliminate the need for manual storage tier policies and help reduce costs. By automatically placing clients’ most critical data on SSDs, Easy Tier provides quick access to data so it can be analyzed for insight as needed to provide competitive advantage.


Q And what can we expect in 2011?


AI think we will see even more emphasis placed on data reduction technology and techniques to help our clients control growth whilst maintaining and improving performance. I also think that the drive to improve usability both for storage arrays and service management software will continue with the aim of further improving storage efficiency and driving down cost.


Q And where should the intelligence lie within the storage environment?


AAt the virtualisation layer, logically external to the storage itself. This is for three reasons:


 If we hope to simplify management then a common set of tools and single point of management make sense


 Provision of storage functionality needs to be common and ubiquitous across all storage platforms to allow the storage to be flexible to rapidly changing needs.


 The ability to make purchasing decision for storage free from the details of function and existing skill sets allows us to adopt the best technology for our needs at any given time and exploit any advantages new technology presents.


Q Any thoughts on the major storage issues for 2011? AGrowth, growth and more growth!


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