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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LK2 who wrote (9024)	2/5/2001 11:15:35 PM
From: Gus	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9256

What's Al up to? .....Not surprisingly, the methods of storing, protecting, and managing this data have assumed paramount importance. The data is commonly a corporation's most valuable asset. Recent surveys indicate that more than 50% of corporate capital equipment investment is now being spent on the procurement of data storage systems. With data storage playing such a central role, it's time to re-evaluate the traditional model illustrating a computer system as a wheel, with the CPU at the hub and all the peripheral devices surrounding it as nodes on the end of the spokes. In an updated model that reflects the critical role of data, the storage devices (or the storage network) become the hub of the wheel, and the CPU assumes the role of a data-crunching engine along with the other peripheral devices. The methods of data storage are undergoing evolutionary change as the overall computing environment progresses. Before the 1970s, most enterprise systems were mainframe computers using centralized data storage, where disk and tape devices the size of refrigerators resided in special cleanrooms. Big, slow, and expensive by today's standards, these corporate resources were nonetheless relatively easy to manage by the IS department. As computing networks evolved in the 1980s, data storage became increasingly decentralized and dispersed, and data management began to take on a new urgency in the minds of many IS managers. The advent of the PC gave rise to the now ubiquitous client/server network model. As data storage demands grew, the most common solution was simply to add more storage to the network. Complex systems evolved to contain various, and often incompatible, hardware platforms, operating systems, and storage management utilities, further complicating the task of data management. All too often, these systems suffer from compromised server and network performance and are vulnerable to data unavailability and system downtime. Finally, the Internet, with an insatiable hunger for data, has come into wide acceptance, resulting in the ultimate nightmare for many IS managers. The real cost of data storage to a corporation is not simply the initial purchase price of the storage equipment, but the ongoing data management costs-up to 10 times the initial equipment cost, according to a recent survey conducted by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). To put this into perspective, consider that this year, corporations will likely spend more than $50 billion on storage-related capital equipment-and $500 billion more to manage it! Costs associated with system failure can run to millions of dollars per hour for large enterprises, which serves as powerful motivation for optimizing network reliability and performance........ Rick Brechtlein is president and chief executive of Shugart Technology Inc. (www.shugarttech.com) in Irvine, CA. is.pennnet.com