Storage Manager, A.I. or Hosted Data Archive: Who Do You Trust?
Recently I read an entry on Informationweek titled, "The Value of a Storage Administrator," by George Crump. He wrote this article to express his own opinion on storage management amidst the deafening buzz around virtualization. Software and hardware providers are rolling out new features to make the storage management process simpler, but his problem with all these new options is that there will still have to be a key individual focusing on managing it all. According to George, the only way a business wouldn't need a storage manager would be with the existence of intelligent and automated storage. Now the idea of storage intelligence and automation sounds appealing, 
but in the end, until we move into the era of artificial intelligence and flying cars, pure storage automation isn't happening. That being the case, all storage options will absolutely need some sort of storage manager to do maintenance and troubleshooting.
However, there is another option that will significantly reduce IT burdens while you wait for the future to come around; outsourcing data management using a hosted cloud based service. Instead of wasting your own resources on a storage manager, when you outsource email management to hosted provider all the data management is taken care of by a third party. You may feel that this is a violation of privacy, but all these companies (like Sonian) do is migrate your information into the archive and store it for you. After that you, and others authorized at your company, are the only ones who can access that data. No longer would you face the threat of data overloading your infrastructure or using valuable IT resources to continually address and manage your storage needs. All you would need is a liaison to become accustomed to an archive service and all of a sudden you stop wasting time with email storage pains.
My personal (biased) opinion: I think a hosted archiving solution is a lot more productive than driving yourself mad trying to manage the endless amounts of data, waiting and hoping someone rolls out an AI to take over your job. Besides, we've all seen the sci-fi movies, we don't need HAL 9000 putting us out of work.
blog comments powered by