The evolution
Most people who are not familiar with the information storage technology
closely, have a perception which is very simplistic of the technology. They
believe that it is all about a bunch of disks on which your data is stored. But
over the years, technology has become extremely sophisticated evolving into
various segments, making it impossible for one person to manage different jobs
to be accomplished across these different segments. IDC says that in the next 4
years, the size of information is going to experience an overall growth of about
5 times. Everything else will evolve and will be upgraded and replaced but at
the end of the day , information that organizations or individuals create cannot
be upgraded. It has to be carried forward until it has value.
Earlier information was stored in disk drives, which are attached as
appendages to computing platforms. With the huge growth of information, over a
period of time it, became impossible to store all this information within the
computer systems. Then arose the need to store data on network storage which
are storage devices outside the computers and which got connected to the
computer over a network, where a number of computing platforms could then share
this storage device. Thus Network storage came into vogue and today most
organizations because of the huge growth in terms of information assets,
deployed Network Storage devices. This means that the way organizations have to
now manage information and design their information infrastructure strategy has
become far different from the way it was done earlier.
Trends in information storage and management
In the past, it was primarily the corporate sector that created
information. But over the last 6-7 years, we have started seeing a big shift
where more info is created by individuals than by corporates. Though majority
of data is being created by individuals — like emails to videos to text
messages, etc — management of this information is still majorly done by
corporation. For example, if we upload a video on Youtube, we are actually
placing it on someone else's server. This means that Youtube has to manage this
information in a way that it is available to millions of people.
The biggest challenge that an organization faces nowadays is managing the
growing information. Some of the technologies which are helping us achieve this
are -
- Virtualization : This technology is helping us in reducing
complexities and enabling cost cutting. - Cloud computing : This is enabling hiding of the complexity of the
apps and business processes from the underlying hardware. - Data deduplication: A compelling technology which is helping in
making sure that similar info doesn't get stored multiple number of times.
It ensures that one piece of info is stored very effectively in a way that it
is optimally made available. For example : A 10 terabyte can be de-duplicated
to 1 or 2 terabyte. - Automation : With the huge growth of info it is becoming very
difficult to manage the infrastructure itself. Information is going to grow 4
to 5 times in the next few years, but organizations cannot employ 5 times
the number of people. Neither can the IT budget be increased by 5 times. So
how to automate this process and how to optimize it would be the next big
questions that the organizations will be ponder.
Need for Information Storage and Management professionals
The academia in Computer Science and Electronics has been teaching computer
architecture, operating systems and data bases but the 4th leg of the stool
which is information management is missing. There is a huge gap in terms of
talent pool and the requirement of the industry of professionals who could
manage information. Multiple areas of specializations have evolved in this
segment.
Now in the area of information storage and management we are looking at
segments like architecture of system itself; connecting the systems to each
other or the servers etc, which is where Storage Area Networking, NAS, Fibre
Channel Over Ethernet (FCOE is coming up in a big way and we expect it to be a
trend changer in the next few years.) etc come in. Then there is the challenge
of keeping the data up and running all the time — which is called as business
continuity. This involves technology that helps not only in protecting the
data but ensuring its availability 24*7. Then there are technology focusing on
backup recovery, archiving, data de-duplication etc. Other technologies are in
the areas of storage virtualization and proactive information management.
Industry Trend
A positive trend that is being observed across the industries in the last 4
years is that companies are dedicating more and more staff to the function of
information storage and management. Earlier there was not even a storage
management group. It used to be part of some other group like Operating Systems
Management . Even job titles in the area of storage management were not
standard. But now specialization are emerging and job titles in this area are
emerging - like storage admin, systems admin, backup, recovery officials,
operations managers, architects etc. Professionals with expertise in this domain
are required but there is great shortage of skilled pros, which is a opening up
great job opportunities. Even people who are in the industry for more than a
decade are now realizing that there is a significant gap in their knowledge too.
“You may be interested in:”
1. What's in 'Store' for You?
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2. Managing information over years
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