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To: Gus who wrote (14430)	8/23/2002 2:47:00 AM
From: Gus	Respond to of 17183

Consolidation's many benefits Bob Passmore, storage area research director with Gartner Research,often talks to storage administrators a lot about their work habits. In many cases, he says, storage administrators don't even have a realistic idea of how much of a burden management has become. In one survey, system administrators were asked how much of their time was spent managing storage. Most respondents estimated it consumed between 15% to 20% of their average workday. Following those same people around for a week revealed the true figure is closer to 60%. This disparity reinforces the strength of what Passmore sees as three key arguments in support of centralized data management, even though the process can potentially create a political quagmire of conflicting interests. Once those interests are effectively managed, however, likely benefits include: *Increasing storage management productivity.* Gartner surveys have shown that storage centralization. By eliminating the need for storage administrators to run around so much - increases the amount of data they can manage by between three and 50 times. That's a major improvement that promises cost savings and efficiency improvements, and may be enough alone to justify the push for centralization. *Improving the overall quality of storage management.* Efforts to provide ample mainframe and open systems storage have often resulted in widely distributed network-attached storage (NAS). Centralize responsibility for that storage, and technical consolidation is an inevitable byproduct. This improves overall storage quality by providing a single, homogeneous storage infrastructure. Introduction of SANs can be of major benefit here, since they force companies to reconsider centralized storage processes from the ground up. *Improving backup and restore processes.* Centralizing data relieves the headaches caused by managing distributed storage, reducing firefighting and allowing improved archiving and backup/recovery procedures through utilization of better storage management software. *Better visibility of actual storage costs.* Where storage has long been seen as an unquantifiable but omnipresent part of the IT budget, breaking it into its own business unit will completely change the way storage is perceived across the company. Today's sophisticated software tools give storage groups a better view of storage usage, enabling chargeback schemes that pass on the newly realized cost of storage management back to its users. "The biggest challenge to the storage administrator is where to get the software tools to make the job easier," says Passmore. "When you have smart, knowledgeable administrative tools, you can get the job done." storagemagazine.techtarget.com