Keeping the lid on storage

Transcription

1 Keeping the lid on storage Drive significant cost savings through innovation and efficiency Publication date: December 2011

2 Optimising storage performance & costs through innovation As the compute power of the Desktop, Laptop or Mobile device increases and the demands of the user grow at a similar rate, data storage growth is pushing global enterprises to the limit. Most organisations lack the capability to efficiently support their existing demand and yet data volumes are expected to grow at a rate of x 40 by The enterprise cannot afford to invest continually in DIY IT platforms and needs to focus its investment on improving the end user experience to ensure a sustainable business. According to Forrester, storage accounts for 17% of the IT budget 2. As such, it remains one of the most expensive hardware purchases for IT. Infrastructure and Operations leaders must reevaluate how they are using this budget, particularly as they incur cost not only at the storage layer but also at the network layer when data migration occurs. Many organisations now understand that storage is a core component of enabling private cloud environments; however there is uncertainty over which type of storage best fits the organisation. Should an organisation commit and fully embrace the cloud concept by placing its storage somewhere in the ether, or retain a DIY model which requires heavy and frequent CAPEX investment? The traditional scale-up approach of buying more storage hardware won t meet the business big data demands. The data growth explosion is not slowing down, and your sales and marketing business units will want to leverage as much data as possible 1. Alternatively, do Service Providers now provide the right balance between legacy DIY solutions and the cloud? The hybrid cloud supports stringent security demands whilst also ensuring that organisations storage requirements are underpinned with the same commercial and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) methodologies. This paper discusses the challenges that a CIO faces today in providing a dynamic and cost effective storage network; addressing these challenges through innovation and integrated business solutions.

3 The CIO challenge The cost reduction demands on a CIO are extreme, outweighed only by the demands for quicker and more efficient IT platforms. With cloud now a reality rather than a buzz word the IT roadmap is clear, and ensuring business agility whilst meeting the demands for data growth and more accessible data storage requirements remains top of the IT agenda. Business agility is fundamental as it provides the capability to support revenue growth, cost reduction and dynamically adapt to changing market forces such as regulatory implications and shifts in customer trends as consumers increasingly embrace multi channel capabilities. Adopting a cloud based IT strategy is the only way the CIO can ensure business agility and efficiencies are maintained. 75% of CIOs cited business agility as the main driver towards cloud. 3 However, the decision to adopt the as a service concept is one that should only be taken following considerable due diligence. There are many providers offering cost effective cloud based storage platforms but do these really provide an appropriate storage environment for the enterprise or simply introduce increased business risk and reduced agility? A service provider must have depth in capability across multiple disciplines (data centre, network, security, storage & compute), all of which provided as a service to truly support the enterprise. Fragmenting the solution is not an option as the benefits of cloud are outweighed by the increased business risk. In addition, the CIO must have confidence that the service provider understands the specific needs of their business and the impact if these needs are not met; maintaining regulatory compliance can be crucial to many organisations. Adoption of the ITIL framework across both client and service provider should be the foundation upon which the CIO selects a partner. The right partner - the right credentials It s clear that the cloud concept, and cloud storage, is now a reality and can drive significant cost benefit, Forrester believes that a cloud based model for storage can be 74% cheaper than running it in house. 4 However, organisations need to be clear on their requirements before selecting a service provider. The key challenge will be in moving from a dedicated storage infrastructure to a cloud based environment, ensuring the business is served whilst reducing cost. Many service providers will offer cloud storage, however, real importance needs to be placed on the overall service capability and how aligned the service providers IT strategy is to yours. A Service Provider with hybrid cloud compute and storage capabilities will differentiate themselves through greater value creation; robust security compliance and stronger business led service levels, when compared against niche providers. D.I.Y, Cloud, Private or Hybrid? There are many models offering cloud storage so how does a CIO decide the most appropriate platform for their organisation? The legacy DIY models are CAPEX intensive and require heavy overheads to maintain in house support and management yet do allow the CIO to maintain control of their world. Conversely, pure cloud storage platforms will certainly realise OPEX savings targets but come with mixed reviews and are they really providing enterprise class and persistent storage? Lengthy outages have been experienced during the earlier rollouts and whilst these will be addressed it should raise some concerns around the lack of transparency in public cloud services, in particular the structure and resilience of the design. Recognising that DIY and cloud storage platforms address many of the CIO s challenges, but not all, is a hybrid solution or private cloud the answer? By leveraging the benefits of a private cloud storage environment through a service provider, organisations can maximise cost savings but not at the expense of data security or service availability. As the enterprise needs to understand where data is stored, accessed and destroyed an effective cloud storage model must allow the enterprise to retain certain controls. A hybrid cloud storage platform provides a much greater degree of control than a public cloud based storage platform as the IT organisation can stay much closer to the service provider throughout the data migration programme. As organisations look to maximise cost efficiencies through cloud based services, the difference between cloud computing and cloud storage must be well understood. Acknowledging that the enterprise can compute anywhere it is imperative that it stores securely.

4 Security An Ovum report found that more than 50% of multinationals saw security and data governance as the top 2 key barriers to adoption of cloud services. 5 So security, data classification and residency need to be considered early on in the decision making process. The key to security assessment is to determine the data classification - what data is suited to dedicated private cloud and what is suited to a secure multi-tenanted environment? This will then determine what services you should put where. The Vodafone approach Our proposition is simple in its construct and allows our clients to leverage the as a service benefits and maximise operational and capital savings. Recognising the constraints that a one size fits all model brings, our Storage as a Service infrastructure allows for a scaled approach to data tiering, ensuring data resides on the right platform, at the right time, leveraging maximum cost benefit. Our clients have the ability to embrace the cloud phenomenon, within a private cloud environment, thereby minimising the risk that adopting a traditional cloud brings, whilst still leveraging the business benefits. Our experience and credibility in providing complex business solutions, supported by our storage partners EMC 2, mean the enterprise engages with a visible partner that has real depth and capability across multiple disciplines and can provide a true end to end ITIL led service. Vodafone Storage as a Service is provided across our UK Data Centres maintaining full business continuity and ensuring data residency within the UK. Using the EMC 2 product suite, Vodafone have best of breed capability to provide Data Centre, Storage & Compute as a Service, all of which is underpinned by our CESG accredited global MPLS network. Some of the features and benefits of the Vodafone service are detailed below: Cost & performance optimisation Fast becoming the standard, de-duplication can lead to volume reduction in magnitude of 20 times or higher. By de-duplicating the back-up environment significant space/power & people costs can be avoided. In addition, up to 60% of data is overprotected, retained on expensive storage and probably replicated too often relative to its business value. This results in excess storage expense. The use of automated tiering will always ensure that only hot data (which is needed regularly and requires rapid access) remains on the highest performance & most expensive storage while the colder data is seamlessly moved to slower larger drives Data residency Often data cannot be deleted because of regulatory or business reasons. However, the data may be of little intrinsic value and therefore needs to be kept on the lowest possible cost platform. The benefits are that this cheap & deep platform can bring significant CAPEX/ power/space & people savings over primary storage systems. Thin provisioning Thin Provisioning, in a shared storage environment, is a method for optimising utilization of available storage. This methodology eliminates almost all whitespace which helps avoid the poor utilisation rates that occur in the traditional storage allocation. Organisations can purchase less storage in line with actual business usage and recognise further savings. Disaster recovery & business continuity Server virtualisation enables organisations to leverage savings by virtualising their server estates. By virtualising storage, a CIO can also realise commercial benefits along with providing a greater DR&BCP capability back into the organisation. The dependencies between data and where it s stored are removed, allowing for flexibility in how capacity and work flows are managed to maintain business continuity. Security As a provider of existing secure services to confidential and restricted levels in the UK, we already understand this requirement and have demonstrated our ability to deliver and operate secure services. The concept of the extension of this capability into the data centre is therefore less risky with an organisation that understands the nature of data segregation. Storage managed services Through a full storage assessment we will provide a comprehensive review of a customer s storage environment. The service provides a practical prioritised action plan designed to improve efficiency and utilisation of existing storage infrastructure. Enabling you to become agile in moving data across your business whilst managing risk and optimising your cost profile. Once migrated, our Managed Storage consultants will proactively manage the environment to maintain performance and continued cost optimisation throughout the lifecycle.

5 In summary Our proposition is clear; we enable enterprises to leverage significant cost savings by adopting the as a service approach for storage through an enterprise class storage platform. The enterprise can retain control and knowledge of where their data resides, scale their requirements in line with fluctuating business needs, whilst maintaining separation between the application and data so the organisations IT strategy is not limited. With the plethora of social media applications IT functions should expect to see an increasing demand from its employees for the ability to access their data anywhere and from any device. With this in mind, there is a clear need for organisations to support changing demands. However this demand must be matched with the same levels of security as if they were connected to the corporate network. Vodafone s Storage as a Service can drive improved workforce productivity within an organisation and more flexible secure access to their data. 1 Big Data Needs More Than Just Big Storage, Forrester Research Inc. September 30, Big Data Needs More Than Just Big Storage, Forrester Research Inc. September 30, CIO Global Cloud Computing Adoption Survey January File Storage Costs Less In The Cloud Than In-House, Forrester Research Inc, August 25, What Multinationals Want: Opportunities in Cloud Computing. Ovum, June 2011

6 VCH10546TR/11.13_01 To find out more, please contact your Account Manager or call us on Vodafone Limited. Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2FN Registered in England No