Top 5 storage predictions for 2008

Computerworld Australia 11/28/07

Sandra Rossi, Computerworld Australia

Hitachi Data Systems released its top five storage predictions for 2008, with data de-duplication rated the hottest and most innovative technology to hit the market since virtualization.

The company's ANZ managing director, Mark Kay, said data de-duplication will reach prime time in 2008 as IT managers discover the technology and its benefits.

He said data de-duplication can deliver businesses savings of 10:1, 20:1 and even over 25:1 in terms of storage backups, making retention of large amounts of data for longer periods on disk a viable and attractive option. Hitachi predicts the death of network-based virtualization and the rise of controller-based virtualization as it becomes a dominant approach to storage virtualization in 2008.

Kay said controller-based virtualization will provide a solid framework for extensions such as thin provisioning and dynamic tiered storage as these technologies also experience success in 2008.

"Looking even deeper into the future, Hitachi predicts that storage virtualization will be 'de rigueur' and the battles over where it should reside will be resolved," he said.

As the skills shortage worsens, Hitachi believes that it will reach a boiling point in 2008 whereby the effectiveness of storage operations will be severely impacted.

Kay said basic activities such as backup and recovery, DR testing and capacity management will be done poorly, if at all.

"Consequently, Hitachi predicts that we will see a shift in the economics of storage management as companies experience greater cost exposures to information risk, compliance, storage utilization and IT's responsiveness to business," he said.

"Off-shoring of storage administration activities will increase as a result of the skills shortage, but offshore organizations will face similar challenges." Kay went on to say that efforts to push business continuity and disaster recovery to branch offices and midsize businesses will continue in 2008,

He said there will be huge investments in disk-to-disk backup.

"This technology has already experienced huge success in the Australian market as organizations look to eliminate branch office tape changes and provide faster, more reliable restoration of data from backups," he said.

So what is the number one prediction for 2008? Kay claims data center problems will worsen before "going green" becomes mainstream.

"Many Australian companies have hit a wall in the data center, running out of floor space or reaching the limits of their electrical and cooling systems," he said.

" Hitachi predicts that this data center dilemma will worsen in 2008, forcing CIOs and IT managers to turn toward leaner, greener practices such as dynamic provisioning, data de-duplication, power-down and storage virtualization to rectify the problem.

" As such, Hitachi believes that green practices and technologies will play an increasingly central role in CIOs' project and budget planning in 2008."

One of the more obvious trends in storage in recent years is the battle between tape and disk.

Tape library revenue dropped more than 15 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Disk's ability to back up and recover data faster at a slightly higher premium than tape has made it the preferable way to protect data.

"The cost per megabyte of magnetic disk storage continues to fall, resulting in a perception that disk storage is closing the price gap with tape storage," according to Freeman Reports.

A recent report from the Enterprise Strategy Group shows that 21 percent of the respondents backed up data to disk, 51 percent backed up to disk and then to tape and 29 percent backed up to tape only.