The Business Case for Storage Optimization

The explosion of data triggered by the mobile and social media revolutions have created extraordinary opportunities for enterprises to collect and analyze digital information. Naturally, enterprises also need ways to store that growing amount of valuable data. Between the requirements of the business for scalable data storage and the perpetual constraints of IT budgets, storage management—or storage optimization—is more than a best practice; it’s an imperative.

Storage optimization enables data centers and the businesses they support to use storage resources more efficiently, thus saving money on additional storage hardware, cooling equipment and electricity, storage administration, and possible expansion of the data center’s floor space.

Further, by implementing a tiered storage model as part of an optimization strategy, enterprises can ensure that data is stored in the right place. For example, frequently accessed data—such as payroll information or customer accounts—should be stored on faster storage devices such as hybrid-flash and all-flash arrays, while infrequently accessed data (such as compliance and regulatory reporting data) is better off stored on slower spinning magnetic disk drives.

While data storage can be optimized to some extent through processes, frameworks, and storage management software, modern storage technology such as flash storage provide dramatically better performance in enterprises that require high performance, such as those deploying virtual desktops, those using enterprise resource planning software and data analytics, and those with large-scale ecommerce platforms.

As enterprises continue to amass digital data from website traffic, mobile devices, social media, and the Internet of Things, older technology such as spinning magnetic disks will become increasingly inadequate. If your business requires both scalable storage to handle vast amounts of data and high performance to meet the demands of customers and employees in the digital, mobile economy, it makes sense to start planning a storage optimization strategy that includes a refresh with modern technologies such as flash and hybrid-flash arrays.

Over the long run these new storage technologies should provide higher-quality, optimized storage that will make it easier and faster to access data, and at a lower cost per gigabyte. Storage optimization can transform your data center from a storage facility to a strategic asset.