Organizations often lack an Enterprise Storage Management (ESM) policy and associated Data Life-Cycle Management (DLCM) methodology, leading to data and information overflow.  Storing too much data on high performance storage systems or too many storage systems results in unnecessary data storage costs, unnecessary capacity, and burdens the expansion of essential and new mission critical data requirements.  This is characterized by “better be safe than sorry, so let’s keep it and not delete it" attitude. Many organizations lack the storage engineering skill sets and requirements analysis to effectively and efficiently engineer an ESM system with a multi-tiered Storage Area Network (SAN) with hierarchical storage management features to alleviate this problem.  CEXEC has the personnel and experience to get your data under control.

Excessive data growth and increased and unnecessary storage costs may be eliminated with a well defined ESM policy and system.  As part of the ESM policy development, a thorough requirements analysis must be performed with organizational and departmental stakeholders that understand the functional and technological application data processing needs.  This includes the business application, email, and file share data storage categorization and processing needs of the organization.  It involves preparing a business impact analysis and Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) requirements for the organization.  It must identify the information assurance policies and regulations to address data confidentiality, integrity, availability, and protection requirements.  Storage costs and performance capability trade-offs must be made to ensure only the highest performance and highest availability data are stored on the more expensive tier 1 technologies while less demanding data storage needs are provided by other less expensive tiers.

A well defined ESM policy and properly engineered ESM system will provide substantial qualitative and quantitative benefits to include:

 Reduced data storage costs
 High availability and reliability of data
 Expandable and scalable data storage
 Faster application data processing and improved performance
 Only high performance data stored on most expensive technologies
 Data stored on tiered stored technologies commensurate with availability and performance requirements
 Minimized total cost of ownership (TCO) and maximized return on investment (ROI)
 Faster failover, backup, and restoration of data especially in COOP scenarios

A well defined ESM policy and properly engineered ESM system will ultimately result in better performance, availability, and reliability at a reduced cost.  If your organization is suffering from information overflow and its excessive costs, contact CEXEC and we will help you take back control of your Enterprise Storage Management.