What are the latest trends in enterprise data storage?
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January 24, 2012
Like any other segment of the IT industry, data storage technology and data protection solutions in the enterprise segment
today is constantly changing. Information technology managers and system admins need to keep up with the latest trends in data
storage technology.
With today's modern cloud hosting solutions, the concept of storing copies of data for backup protection
and for the long-term archiving needs of the enterprise isn't an option but a necessity. And now the cloud makes a lot of sense and
is in fact a lot more cost-efficient than most other solutions. It's also a lot simpler as well.
The cloud now is the target device for business users
and they need efficient solutions that transport their data to and from their desktops. Enterprise solutions providers such as Sun Hosting and others supply data protection
services to businesses of all sizes and can customize them to fit their specific needs.
Other enterprise data storage solutions consist of flash technology. Like the Cloud, flash technology has been growing in
popularity lately and is poised to continue, if manufacturing costs can continue to be reduced.
IT managers can now picture a world where the disk drive array has migrated up into the cloud, where bulk data is stored
today, ready to be retrieved at a moment's notice, the same way it was initially stored-- with perfect data integrity for all
its users.
Large IT solution vendors such as IBM, HP, Dell and Sun Hosting have re-invented their storage businesses by buying in
new technologies. Dell is a good example of this. It has acquired EqualLogic for its iSCSI SANS solutions. It also recently
acquired Compellent Technologies for its Fibre Channel solutions.
Dell also acquired last year Ocarina Tech for data deduplication and compression, and finally Exanet for scale-out NASs.
It's also partnering with Caringo for object storage, spreading data dedupe and scale-out NAS technology across its storage
platfoms, and building a common management front-end across these platforms as well.
Typically, innovation in data storage today happens outside the established industry players and they have to reinvent
the wheel themselves, like HP with its StoreOnce data deduplication solutions.
Overall, mergers and acquisitions over the past few years in the data storage industry have been extremely active, and
the acquisitons of EMC, Hitachi Data Services, NetApp and many others are perfect examples of that.
Now these same players face a new wave of startups-- cloud-facing ones like Sun Hosting, flash plus disk arrays like
Nimble Data, pure flash arrays and data copy reduction concerns like Actifio to name just a few.
But overall, R&D and innovation has to be embraced by all players. Think of the success of Steve Jobs with Apple. See how
Nokia's mobile phone division was devastated by smartphones. R&D is key in the IT industry. Always has been and is even more
important today than ever.
In other IT industry news
Europe's second largest software firm, Software AG, is reorganizing in the United States with a big focus on the West
Coast. Company CEO Karl Streibich says that sales growth in his company's U.S. operations have to catch up to levels in
the rest of Europe.
Streibich is creating a federal business unit tasked with selling specifically to U.S. national and local government
customers to win extra business.
Specifically, he plans to greatly increase Software AG's presence in Silicon Valley, both in numbers of customers and
as a technology center founded on Terracotta-– the Java performance and caching specialist firm it acquired last spring.
"That is the key-– that we become more American and improve our image of a U.S.-based technology company," he said.
Streibich spoke at the company's annual EMEA strategy kick-off conference in London on Jan. 19.
The enterprise software maker will follow in the footsteps of fellow German firm SAP, which has a large development and
sales presence in Palo Alto, which sits opposite SAP's biggest competitor, Oracle.
The commitment to become not just more American but also more Californian came after Software AG shares took a hammering
on news it missed fourth-quarter estimates.
That produced a chain reaction of reports that Software AG was an acquisition target and calls for a strategy re-config.
Streibich says there's no need for a refresh, just to "execute", as growth was strong at 7 to 8 percent. And 2010 was Software
AG's most successful year, he says, but certainly not 2011.
Streibich was unable to say just how big Software AG's Silicon Valley presence would become but did hint at more acquisitions.
"We have to define how fast we can grow in the U.S. through acquisitions and organizationally and then through that learn
what our role is," he said.
Streibich is placing a lot on the shoulders of Terracotta, both physically and as a technology anchor for Software AG's
aspirations to serve customers' needs in the enterprise segment.
Before Software AG came into the picture, Terracotta was just a small Java caching and scaling start-up company whose
in-memory technology allows Java apps to scale smoothly and perform quickly across data centers. The company claims it has
500,000 deployments, with the majority of these in Fortune 2000 companies.
Terracota has 15 employees compared to the 5,500 at Software AG as a whole. Streibich drew analogies with the 2007 acquisition
of web services specialist Web Methods and 2009's acquisition of IDS Sheer which gave Software AG's the ARIS process management
tools it wanted so badly.
Source: Sys Admin News SA.
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