Optimizing the enterprise

Amit Luthra, national manager, Storage and Networking Solutions, Dell India

Right data, in the right time, at the right place - this is the mantra that IT decision makers are chanting subconsciously, and it is this mantra that is the key to optimizing an enterprise' IT. If technology has given us anything, it is the ability to do business at an accelerated rate.

Companies nowadays should progress along with technology and think of advanced, out of the box ideas to run their businesses successfully.

To this end, industries are charging their application development teams with refining existing business processes through the use of specialized optimization tools. These tools are based on sophisticated software and hardware optimization.

When it comes to enterprise IT, optimization of storage is the key enabler to business success. Organizations should aim at building on their existing storage structure in a way as to ready themselves for their future needs as well- this is where scalability becomes imperative.

When it comes to data management, enterprises with the highest levels of data growth face the most challenges. However, they choose to address their problem with more hardware rather than attempt more sophisticated or efficient approaches. A large number of companies with fast growing data end up spending a sizeable chunk of their IT budgets on storage requirements.

These data management challenges are pushing the limits of the data centre as we know it today. IT departments are expected to reduce their storage costs and increase productivity. Optimized performance is of the essence wherein information can be accessed faster and a competitive edge is maintained. Lastly, the risk of information loss has to be mitigated and enterprise data has to be protected efficiently from loss, theft or inadvertent destruction.

Following are some ways to optimize storage and increase efficiency of Enterprise IT:

Storage Arrays

Over the years, IT departments have been burdened with silos of storage deployed in individual database environments. The first stage of effective storage optimization is to consolidate these silos into a shared storage environment. For this purpose, many organizations are deploying shared storage arrays underneath their databases. This makes it easier to control and provision storage at the system administrator level.

Converged Infrastructure

Converged infrastructure is the next big thing to achieving optimization. It succeeds in achieving high levels of energy efficiency, superior manageability, and lower cap-ex as a result of increased density and a smaller footprint requirement. The best part is that this helps in reduction of budgets.

Green data centres

A green data centre is designed in a way as to enable maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. The construction and operation of a green data center includes advanced technologies and strategies. While the initial costs of setting up and certifying a green datacenter might be high, in the long run cost savings can be realized on operations and maintenance.

De-dulpication: Among the various strategies for meeting green IT directives are server virtualization and data de-duplication.

In addition to containing costs through increased IT efficiency, organizations are also implementing a variety of technology approaches--from virtualization and storage management to high availability tools to make better use of and maximize existing hardware resources.

Server and storage virtualization

Through server virtualization, multiple workloads can be moved onto fewer, more powerful servers. Organizations can retire unneeded server hardware and gain immense advantages in flexibility, scalability and data center automation.To build and optimize an efficient virtual data center, a solid storage foundation is of the essence.

A solid storage foundation should consist of the following features:

Flexible design, implementation and management through end-to-end virtualization across server, network and storage segments

Simplified management of high availability, workload mobility and disaster recovery through storage integration with various virtualization platforms

Seamless administration through integrated virtual server and virtual storage operations

Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) through simplified operations, application-aware automation and standards-based design

Data centre consolidation

Data centre consolidation is basically the entire gamut of efficient storage technologies which includes server virtualization, storage virtualization, cloud computing etc. To highlight the importance of all these techniques of efficiency, the following is what organizations will get upon optimization:

Increase in business growth

Increase in efficiency

Data Optimization

Application Integration

Infrastructure Modernization

Optimization is the key differentiator that helps an organization set it itself apart from the rest of the pack and maintain a competitive advantage. If an organization's IT Infrastructure is able to provide them with the above 5 key benefits then they are on the right path to achieving optimization. So get, set to optimize!