"More Organisations to Adopt Private Cloud"
Information storage remains the fundamental yet a neglected component for small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well as big organisations. EMC Corporation is a leading provider of information infrastructure systems and works in the education front to spread awareness about data storage. Alok Shrivastava, senior director, EMC spoke to EFYTimes.com about the future of data storage management in a growing cloud environment. Excerpts from the interview:
Q: What are the main challenges that you identify in relation to data storage across businesses?
A: Every year, we conduct a worldwide study (*) of the information storage industry to identify the challenges IT is facing today. Consistently, we find the biggest challenge is the ability to manage expanding data storage growth. For instance, a recent industry study (**) found that the data created last year (2009) grew by 62 per cent despite the economic slowdown. Further, the analysts forecasts that between 2009 and 2020, information in the digital universe will grow by 44 times.
Of course, all of the data growth creates related challenges for IT functions. They have to now store, manage, and protect ever increasing pools of data. Backup/Recovery, duplications, local replications, remote replications, etc for disaster recovery and business continuity etc; all data management-related issues are in that list.
And then there are other related issues and challenges directly or indirectly associated with it.
Virtualisation: Deploying virtualisation across servers and storage is one of the major undertakings for the IT/storage managers. Virtualisation provides benefits that go well beyond traditional technology. It is an essential component of IT's drive for operational efficiency. Benefits include efficient use of existing resources, smaller hardware footprint, and reduced total cost of ownership.
To derive maximum benefit from virtualisation initiatives, you need highly skilled, well trained and certified virtualisation experts.
Ability of IT managers to make long-term big picture decisions: The ability to make big picture, informed decisions is a critical success factor for any IT manager. It's difficult for any individual to really understand everything that's going on in information technology space. Once you have identified the business objectives and drivers, you need to have advisers and smart technical architects/designers that are experts in their subject areas. They understand the industry, and are able to give recommendations to their management for making better decisions for growth.
Lastly, it is the issue of the role that information storage and management plays in evolving IT infrastructures. As data growth accelerates, information storage is becoming a central function in IT infrastructures. Given that, it is imperative that companies place the same level of focus on managing storage as they do with other elements in the IT infrastructure, such as database, network, OS, and applications where there is a lot of knowledge in the market. Despite a mature and huge market, comparatively few give similar consideration to information storage and its management.
We believe that the shortage of knowledgeable people fuels many of the issues that come in play.
Q: With virtualisation and cloud revolution making fast inroads, what is the future of desktop storage?
A: Even without cloud, lot of the data that we are creating is not on our desktop. If you look at it, the majority of information that people create is being shifted elsewhere. For instance, a simple video post on YouTube is managed and held by the site, not you.
Today, the existing cloud infrastructure takes on the responsibility to manage your data. Virtualisation is a crucial step along the journey to cloud computing. Once we reach a level, where common commodity applications are on cloud, we may not need a massive infrastructure on our laptops, desktops, etc. But I would suspect that individuals will continue to own the responsibility to protect their own valuable assets such as pictures, videos, and personal records. According to a study by IDC, almost 15 percent of the data would be on cloud by 2020.
Q: Out of this 15 per cent, will organisations store its data on the cloud or individuals?
A: It certainly will be a combination. Organisations would prefer to keep their critical data on private cloud due to security concerns. But, there would be applications that use public cloud. Security is an important consideration and the industry is making progress in this area too.
Q: Since you are primarily working in the education domain, is there a specific program that you have prepared to promote?
A: We have realised for some time that there is a huge gap in people's understanding and appreciation for information storage and management. We discovered that few -- if any -- universities worldwide had an information storage technology component in their curriculum.
As I mentioned earlier, until recently, information storage and management technology has been neglected as a central function of today's IT infrastructure. When people teach about servers, OS, databases, and networks, they occasionally package storage within that. But the appreciation that this area demands is essential. Today's evolving IT infrastructures require IT professionals with distinct, specific skill sets who understand the interrelationships between IT elements and can tie storage to the other four pillars of IT -- OS, applications, DB, and networks -- individually while also integrating the entire infrastructure to provide optimum performance, flexibility, and management.
Q: Now, it's time to play catch up.
A: When we realised that it was such a big problem, we came up with the concept of 'open curriculum'. This is a technology-based curriculum that focuses on information storage concepts and principles, rather than product specifics. It includes teaching about the common concepts, architectures, principles of operations, theory behind it. We do use EMC's real life case studies and allow/encourage partners to add other case studies as well.
We believe that concept-based information storage education has wider value and relevance for IT professionals in multi-vendor infrastructure environments. Fully grasping information storage concepts like capacity management, storage networking, performance, availability, rapid provisioning, and tiered storage is critical to the success of any business that uses IT. Plus, the introduction of new technologies, such as storage virtualisation, makes these skills even more critical.
We approach universities with two concepts:
# to find the problem itself based on real data/real studies
# to offer common solutions based on well adopted technologies
This is, thus, a drive to create professionals for the storage domain. In the end, the students who wish to be in the storage industry would benefit.
Q: Is it a part of curriculum for graduation, PG or doctorate courses?
A: Graduation. In most cases it's an elective. Universities encourage students to take it. In selected cases, it has now become a compulsory part of Computer Science degree.
Q: Is there a job space provided to the experts post-training?
A: Job space has started to happen now as the awareness levels have gone up. Computer Science graduates coming out with knowledge of information storage and management are certainly attractive candidates to EMC. Not only does EMC hire people from these colleges but we see our partners/customers and other companies also hiring them.
Q: Do you think storage experts would also be required in non-IT organisations?
A: I can think of areas that are more associated with driving standards and processes. An area that will evolve with virtualisation and cloud technology is the area which will focus more on process engineering, for example. Primarily, you'll see this in sophisticated environments which are cloud- and information-centric with huge information to be managed. So the key thing that can become prominent, outside the classic IT, would be process engineering.
Q: With the immense increase in the data, how do you think the challenge to retrieve the data at a faster rate is handled?
A: The majority of new data that is growing now is unstructured. The databases are growing, but the speed at which the unstructured data is growing is much faster. The most effective way to retrieve that is to have a strong search mechanism. Industry analysts say, search is very powerful today but the nature of search would evolve, for example ability to identify individuals through pattern recognition or voice recognition is set to evolve. It largely will depend upon how sophisticated the search engine technology becomes.
--Dhiraj Khare, Onkar Sharma and Pallavi Arun Verma
Q: What are the main challenges that you identify in relation to data storage across businesses?
A: Every year, we conduct a worldwide study (*) of the information storage industry to identify the challenges IT is facing today. Consistently, we find the biggest challenge is the ability to manage expanding data storage growth. For instance, a recent industry study (**) found that the data created last year (2009) grew by 62 per cent despite the economic slowdown. Further, the analysts forecasts that between 2009 and 2020, information in the digital universe will grow by 44 times.
Of course, all of the data growth creates related challenges for IT functions. They have to now store, manage, and protect ever increasing pools of data. Backup/Recovery, duplications, local replications, remote replications, etc for disaster recovery and business continuity etc; all data management-related issues are in that list.
And then there are other related issues and challenges directly or indirectly associated with it.
Virtualisation: Deploying virtualisation across servers and storage is one of the major undertakings for the IT/storage managers. Virtualisation provides benefits that go well beyond traditional technology. It is an essential component of IT's drive for operational efficiency. Benefits include efficient use of existing resources, smaller hardware footprint, and reduced total cost of ownership.
To derive maximum benefit from virtualisation initiatives, you need highly skilled, well trained and certified virtualisation experts.
Ability of IT managers to make long-term big picture decisions: The ability to make big picture, informed decisions is a critical success factor for any IT manager. It's difficult for any individual to really understand everything that's going on in information technology space. Once you have identified the business objectives and drivers, you need to have advisers and smart technical architects/designers that are experts in their subject areas. They understand the industry, and are able to give recommendations to their management for making better decisions for growth.
Lastly, it is the issue of the role that information storage and management plays in evolving IT infrastructures. As data growth accelerates, information storage is becoming a central function in IT infrastructures. Given that, it is imperative that companies place the same level of focus on managing storage as they do with other elements in the IT infrastructure, such as database, network, OS, and applications where there is a lot of knowledge in the market. Despite a mature and huge market, comparatively few give similar consideration to information storage and its management.
We believe that the shortage of knowledgeable people fuels many of the issues that come in play.
Q: With virtualisation and cloud revolution making fast inroads, what is the future of desktop storage?
A: Even without cloud, lot of the data that we are creating is not on our desktop. If you look at it, the majority of information that people create is being shifted elsewhere. For instance, a simple video post on YouTube is managed and held by the site, not you.
Today, the existing cloud infrastructure takes on the responsibility to manage your data. Virtualisation is a crucial step along the journey to cloud computing. Once we reach a level, where common commodity applications are on cloud, we may not need a massive infrastructure on our laptops, desktops, etc. But I would suspect that individuals will continue to own the responsibility to protect their own valuable assets such as pictures, videos, and personal records. According to a study by IDC, almost 15 percent of the data would be on cloud by 2020.
Q: Out of this 15 per cent, will organisations store its data on the cloud or individuals?
A: It certainly will be a combination. Organisations would prefer to keep their critical data on private cloud due to security concerns. But, there would be applications that use public cloud. Security is an important consideration and the industry is making progress in this area too.
Q: Since you are primarily working in the education domain, is there a specific program that you have prepared to promote?
A: We have realised for some time that there is a huge gap in people's understanding and appreciation for information storage and management. We discovered that few -- if any -- universities worldwide had an information storage technology component in their curriculum.
As I mentioned earlier, until recently, information storage and management technology has been neglected as a central function of today's IT infrastructure. When people teach about servers, OS, databases, and networks, they occasionally package storage within that. But the appreciation that this area demands is essential. Today's evolving IT infrastructures require IT professionals with distinct, specific skill sets who understand the interrelationships between IT elements and can tie storage to the other four pillars of IT -- OS, applications, DB, and networks -- individually while also integrating the entire infrastructure to provide optimum performance, flexibility, and management.
Q: Now, it's time to play catch up.
A: When we realised that it was such a big problem, we came up with the concept of 'open curriculum'. This is a technology-based curriculum that focuses on information storage concepts and principles, rather than product specifics. It includes teaching about the common concepts, architectures, principles of operations, theory behind it. We do use EMC's real life case studies and allow/encourage partners to add other case studies as well.
We believe that concept-based information storage education has wider value and relevance for IT professionals in multi-vendor infrastructure environments. Fully grasping information storage concepts like capacity management, storage networking, performance, availability, rapid provisioning, and tiered storage is critical to the success of any business that uses IT. Plus, the introduction of new technologies, such as storage virtualisation, makes these skills even more critical.
We approach universities with two concepts:
# to find the problem itself based on real data/real studies
# to offer common solutions based on well adopted technologies
This is, thus, a drive to create professionals for the storage domain. In the end, the students who wish to be in the storage industry would benefit.
Q: Is it a part of curriculum for graduation, PG or doctorate courses?
A: Graduation. In most cases it's an elective. Universities encourage students to take it. In selected cases, it has now become a compulsory part of Computer Science degree.
Q: Is there a job space provided to the experts post-training?
A: Job space has started to happen now as the awareness levels have gone up. Computer Science graduates coming out with knowledge of information storage and management are certainly attractive candidates to EMC. Not only does EMC hire people from these colleges but we see our partners/customers and other companies also hiring them.
Q: Do you think storage experts would also be required in non-IT organisations?
A: I can think of areas that are more associated with driving standards and processes. An area that will evolve with virtualisation and cloud technology is the area which will focus more on process engineering, for example. Primarily, you'll see this in sophisticated environments which are cloud- and information-centric with huge information to be managed. So the key thing that can become prominent, outside the classic IT, would be process engineering.
Q: With the immense increase in the data, how do you think the challenge to retrieve the data at a faster rate is handled?
A: The majority of new data that is growing now is unstructured. The databases are growing, but the speed at which the unstructured data is growing is much faster. The most effective way to retrieve that is to have a strong search mechanism. Industry analysts say, search is very powerful today but the nature of search would evolve, for example ability to identify individuals through pattern recognition or voice recognition is set to evolve. It largely will depend upon how sophisticated the search engine technology becomes.
--Dhiraj Khare, Onkar Sharma and Pallavi Arun Verma
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