Storage as a driver of revenue growth

What impact can storage tools have on enterprises governed by legal compliance requirements?

Storage management is an often underappreciated and yet critical contributing element to the strategic technical mix. In large, governance orientated enterprises – particularly those found in telecoms and financial services, the absence of an efficient and well thought out data repository can be crippling.

South African entities are particularly prone to this impact. With the introduction of the Protection of Personal Information act and a positive growth outlook in each of these sectors, efficient and legally compliant storage facilities that are also able to encourage expansion are of mounting importance.

In such an environment, storage management can be considered a driver of revenue growth. This essential IT function can impact a business in four key areas.

The first is monitoring and evaluation. Any established organisation is a testament to the importance of process and reporting. If an enterprise does not have a keen understanding of where it stands in terms of storage services the results, in the event of a setback or unexpected demand, can be catastrophic.

Without an available storage framework a business simply cannot function. By implementing real time analyses and monitoring of storage services it is possible to more dynamically ensure data capacity. In this way storage management is a key contributing factor towards uninterrupted business.

Service uptime is closely tied to this. Business critical applications and services are often the first to fail in the event of a storage framework emergency. At a CIO level, such a situation is indicative of poor strategic planning and a lack of visibility. By applying custom thresholds and dashboard to internal data architectures it is possible to avoid a disaster situation altogether.

Driving revenue growth also relies on the optimisation of available resources. As businesses increasingly move towards IT strategies that are based on operational expenditure, the expectation to make the most of current assets is more prevalent than ever.

The analyses of storage workload trends is an important step towards ensuring that strategic goals are being met at throughout application and data repository environments. Naturally, this requires the introduction of tools that are equipped to provide this information in real time.

Productivity is the last and perhaps most tangible contributing element towards revenue growth at a storage level. If employees are equipped to access data and applications on the go, they will naturally become more productive.

This is a difficult balance to strike. In an environment that is governed by compliance and regulations it is easier said than done to simply afford thousands of individual’s mobile access to sensitive information. Doing so requires the presence of a variety of integrated tools that ensure usability without compromising security.

EMC’s Software Defined Storage offering answers these difficult questions. In collaboration with Business Connexion, it is now possible to address these four critical points in one dynamic offering.