85 percent of organizations want cohesive storage and information management

New Delhi: Research for the upcoming Storage Expo has revealed that 85 percent of organizations want to get their data storage, information and content management, and application development out of their silos and into an IT process that enables businesses to add value.

While the study of over 400 storage professionals showed that people want a more cohesive approach, the current situation is far from ideal, with figures revealing that 75 percent of organizations often have their information management and data storage working in separate silos.

Steve O’Donnell, MD, ESG EMEA, and a keynote speaker at Storage Expo, said, “Multiple barriers need to be broken down in order to make progress and bring storage and information management out of their silos.”

He added, “The first and most obvious point is organization. With information management reporting to the CIO and data storage reporting to the CTO, there is a conflict of objectives. While the CIO wants data tightly integrated into functional business applications, somewhat regardless of costs, the CTO wants a single storage platform that he can squeeze costs out of.”

O’Donnell continued, “Sometimes this works but not often. A better approach is to have aligned objectives that focus on delivering business value and treat cost reduction as a secondary, but nevertheless important objective.”

The second point, according to O’Donnell, was greatly improving communication between the business, application development and infrastructure groups to create applications that are designed to operate in the real world.

He further added that the most effective way for organizations to start getting data storage, information and content management and application development out of their silos and into an IT process that enables the business to add value was by combining an effective IT systems architecture with a business aligned technology set management process.