Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Mark your calendars! Next month, IBM's Midsize Insider is hosting me as a speaker for a Webcast: [Storage Management with IBM], on August 7th, 12pm EDT. Midsize Insider is a valuable repository of expert content tailored for small-to-midsized business owners and IT decision makers.

The problems that used to keep storage managers awake at night -- power, cooling and physical footprint -- are being successfully addressed by technology, but a more vexing issue still remains: How to get more out of the limited supply of skilled storage management professionals.

Demand for storage capacity continues to grow far faster than the pool of people to manage it. With no end in sight to data growth, businesses need to apply technology and practices that distribute management responsibility to the people who need storage, and multiply the volumes of storage that skilled professionals can handle.

• Abandon the Craftsman Approach. Storage administrators need to discard some long-help myths about storage management and adopt new ways of thinking that enable them to handle significantly greater capacity.
• Adopt software tools. Computers can now provide unprecedented guidance on storage optimization so that people don’t have to. Policy-based management, smart provisioning and automated tiering are among the innovations that are powering leaps in productivity.
• Consider self-service portals. Companies are now exploring the self-service capabilities of private and public clouds. However, organizations need to adopt policies and limits in place to create an atmosphere of trust that enables efficient self-provisioning for storage.

To sign up for this event, go to the [IBM WebCast Registration Page]!

Update: This event has been re-scheduled to September 25, 2012. Here is the [Registration Page]