• Press Office

The Storage Industry Evolution

By Wayne Dick, Business Development Consultant, Shoden Data Systems, August 2011

Data growth remains one of the biggest challenges being faced by large organisations and data centres today.  Not only does this equate to additional infrastructure to store this data, but also more data centre space. All of which requires substantial investments.

A positive aspect to this growth is the evolution of smarter and more cost effect ways of accessing, storing and backing of data. As server virtualisation has revolutionised the way in which open systems are deployed and managed today - with proven cost reductions compared to the traditional standalone server environments, so too the storage industry is evolving to more than just spinning disks and a place to store data.

Storage solutions such as “thin provisioning”, “automated tiering”, “virtualisation”, “deduplication”, “solid state drives” (aka flash), “compression”, “archiving” and many others are offered by most vendors in some or other guise to assist organisations in reducing the cost and complexity associated to managing and retaining data. The challenge which storage vendor’s face, similar to when server vendors started promoting server virtualisation is demonstrating the benefits, both commercially and operationally which these solutions can bring to organisations.

In addition, some of these solutions require technical resources that are equipped with the correct level of experience, tools and methodologies to understand where a specific technology will contribute towards the reduction of data management costs and complexity or in contrast will only contribute to the problem.

• Gartner research from 1100 representatives undertaken in Nov 2010 found that data grown was organisations biggest challenge, and 62% indicated that they would be expanding their data centre capacity by end of 2011 and 30% would be building  entirely new data centres.

About Shoden

Shoden Data Systems PTY (Ltd.) provides innovative, high-end technology solutions to leading organisations across Africa, allowing them to gain what Shoden refers to as:“The data centre advantage”. Shoden aims to deliver the data centre advantage by understanding clients’ challenges and implementing optimised solutions that address these challenges, coupled with excellent service and support. www.shoden.co.za

For further information

Melinda de Gee
Shoden Data Systems
083 212 9840
Melinda.degee@shoden.co.za