.....Storage area networks (SANs), on the other hand, will still be going through some growing pains in 1999, as vendors try to resolve interoperability issues among the pools of diverse storage systems and servers, and the hubs and switches, in these Fibre Channel-based frameworks. The ultimate goal is to allow any-to-any data sharing. But capacity and data sharing needs are so great at Polk Co., a consumer data resource firm in Southfield, Mich., that VP of IT Dave Zaccagnini isn't waiting for SAN interoperability issues to be resolved.
Zaccagnini is looking to EMC Corp. to help him build enterprise storage networks, the vendor's proprietary, centralized version of a SAN, to replace point-to-point connections. "All Polk has is data. [With EMC], I can share data across platforms, so I'm no longer duplicating storage," he says. That lets him cut storage costs in half; even with these savings, though, the company's storage spending will be between $4 million and $7 million in 1999, up slightly from 1998.
Analysts confirm that storage is one area businesses can't put on hold-even in the face of other concerns. "Y2K won't slow down storage purchases next year, because people will need capacity no matter what," predicts senior analyst Anders Lofgren of Giga Information Group......
IT Frameworks Are Key For Hot Technologies -- Companies plan big investments for infrastructures to support the newest business strategies
techweb.com
|
