Logicalis Asks CIOs: Is There a Smarter Way to Manage Storage?

, Jan 9, 2014

Solution Provider IDs Top Three Reasons CIOs Are Embracing New Storage Technologies

Farmington Hills, MI, March 26, 2013 – Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (http://www.us.logicalis.com/), has identified a thorny problem facing IT pros today: CIOs, strapped with budgetary constraints, have adopted a “don’t fix it unless it’s broken” approach to storage.  The problem with that approach, according to Logicalis storage experts, is that storage is the heart of IT; continuing to rely on storage solutions with a basic architecture developed two decades ago won’t give forward-thinking businesses the advanced data archival and retrieving capabilities that new business pressures are demanding of them.

“Our IT customers are telling us that they’re at a fork in the road.  They’ve got issues with how their company is storing, accessing and mining its data, but their budgets haven’t grown in step in with their internal users’ IT expectations. They want to know if maintaining the status quo will be more costly than pursuing new storage innovations,” says Brandon Harris, vice president, HP Solutions, Logicalis US.  “The short answer is, yes.”

The adoption of new storage innovations – particularly those that are “software-defined-ready” – will become increasingly more important to CIOs as their job functions shift from managing specific applications and systems to more advanced delivery of technical services.  IT departments are expected to be able to mine more value from the information at their disposal while simultaneously reducing that data’s risk exposure.  As a result, legacy storage built on decades-old frameworks is quickly giving way to new storage technologies optimized for the converged infrastructure – particularly software-defined storage devices that separate the management of the device from the device itself.

Why CIOs are Embracing Storage Innovations

  1. Seamless delivery of IT.  CIOs are looking for storage solutions that will help them deliver their IT services in a more timely, cost-effective manner.  This means establishing primary storage options that are able to support all applications and data types across physical, virtual and cloud environments.
  2. More value from information.  “Big data” is the big buzzword in storage communities today, and IT pros are taking that to heart.  They want storage solutions for information retention and analytics that will give them the ability to both archive the exploding amounts of data they need to store and to search through massive big data content repositories in a matter of seconds rather than the hours or days it has taken in the past to perform similar functions.
  3. Reduction in risk exposure.  IT experts are becoming increasingly more risk averse, so they’re looking for information protection through disk-based storage with deduplication for efficient and high-speed backup and recovery processes.  They want increased speed so they can perform backup and recovery functions at two to three times that of previous storage generations, achievable through software-defined storage mechanisms that separate management and traffic functions.

While Logicalis prides itself on being a vendor-neutral solution provider, Harris points out that HP has been among the leaders in both the converged infrastructure and the software-defined networking and storage spaces. “Three innovative storage products CIOs may want to keep an eye on are HP’s StoreServ 7000 midrange 3PAR, StoreAll and StoreOnce. These products represent a new single-platform strategy from HP that marries the robust data storage and information mining capabilities CIOs need with an upgrade path that uses identical command sets to eliminate IT learning curves,” Harris says.  “No matter which vendor’s products a CIO employs in its storage solutions going forward, it’s critical that they choose wisely, ensuring that the devices they buy today are enabled for the converged and software-defined environments they will be running tomorrow.”

Want to learn more?

  • Find out how Logicalis helps CIOs embrace storage innovations.
  • Read Logicalis’ brand-new eBook, “Virtualization 2.0: The Next Era in Enterprise Computing.”

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international IT solutions and managed services provider with a breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications and collaboration; data center and cloud services; and managed services.

Logicalis employs nearly 3,500 people worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of almost 6,000 corporate and public sector customers.  To achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM, CA Technologies, NetApp, VMware and ServiceNow.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.4 billion from operations in Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific and is fast establishing itself as one of the leading IT and Communications solution integrators specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and services.

The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges, with revenues of over $5 billion.

For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/.

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