Key storage tips for resellers

There’s no doubt explosive data growth will be a big challenge for Australian organisations and their IT infrastructure in 2011. The industry will also continue to see new technologies that overcome these challenges – particularly solutions that increase utilisation and flexibility by unifying storage, servers and network connectivity.

By leveraging the following advice, resellers will be able to help their clients overcome their storage challenges and find the right solution that ultimately saves resources and increases productivity, as well as efficiency.

Q. Many of our customers have an inflexible enterprise structure, as well as a gap between what their customers need and what their enterprise can deliver. What kind of strategy should we recommend to them?

 A: Look for a strategy comprised of integrated solutions that closes the gap between what the enterprise requires and what IT can deliver by using technology to not only integrate, but also automate activities from end-to-end.

Q: How can we help customers that have siloed IT architectures and disparate pools of resources?

A: You should consider a converged infrastructure solution that unifies storage, servers and network connectivity into interoperable, shared pools of resources.

When fully resourced and deployed, this will help to increase agility, flexibility and utilisation.

Q: Data sprawl is increasing backup and archiving costs, as well as operational complexity for our customers. What is an effective method to deal with this problem?

A: Consider data deduplication – it’s a cost-effective way to reduce data sprawl. With the right technology and software, organisations can reduce costs by eliminating redundant data and the complexities of multiple deduplication processes. This also helps to free up capacity, allowing clients to store crucial data.

Q: How do we help our customers tackle inflexible storage that does not scale and ends up driving operational complexity over time?

A: You should evaluate how to incorporate a scalable and virtualised storage solution for your clients. It will help reduce costs by creating a pool of consolidated storage that offers high capacity, as well as availability. Capacity can then be quickly assigned or repurposed ‘on the fly’ to support a variety of critical business applications, allowing your customers to respond and make changes in real-time.

Q: Many customers have said their existing storage is inflexible and can’t support their growing business demands. How can they overcome this challenge?

A: It may be time to consider Utility Storage – it’s flexible and enables customers to build a private cloud that is multi-tenant, efficient as well as autonomic. This will enable your customers to respond to business demands with agility and flexibility now and into the future.