The Hindu Business Line : Flexible infrastructure key to meeting storage challenges: Symantec

As businesses increasingly rely on IT to drive collaboration, innovation and growth, the challenges of dealing with data centre complexity also tends to rise, according to Mr John W. Thompson, Chairman and CEO of Symantec Corporation.

"There are literally hundreds of hardware and software combinations in the data centre, all with their own set of management tools, resulting in dozens of disconnected silos and creating a management nightmare," he said while delivering the keynote address at Symantec Vision 2007.

The complexity is heightened as storage requirements grow at over 60 per cent a year, he added.

"While storage would have to meet compliance requirements, it must be recoverable quickly (in the event of a disaster) and make efficient use of power, space and cooling - all of which are becoming alarmingly scarce in today's data centre environment."

New functionality and devices add to the complexity. Mobile devices, which include everything from PDAs to portable storage devices, impact the work environment.

And the use of these tools puts pressure on IT organisations in myriad ways - data is leaked, whether from a lost or stolen laptop or from information transferred to a portable storage device.

Citing a study, he said that 40 per cent of large enterprises did not have a mobile device management policy.

According to Mr Thompson, the key to solving these challenges lies in "having a standardised yet flexible software infrastructure. The ideal environment should support all the platforms that have been deployed from the operating system to hardware alternatives and application."

He called upon the delegates to use software that allow enterprises unite the platforms and the administration with the overall business plan.

Talking about storage complexity, Mr Kris Hagerman, President of the company's Data Centre Management Group, said that every addition to the family tends to make storage (space) more complex.

"With storage growth doubling every two years and utilisation rates hovering around 33 per cent, enormous amounts of duplicate data fill up expensive storage systems."

According to him, the company's latest rollout, Storage United, would be effective in managing storage issues as it helps unite the platform, administration and business problems.

Expressing concern over the huge gap in awareness and understanding between business owners and the storage team, he said: "Storage United is a business initiative. We help enterprises deliver storage as a service by enabling organisations gain visibility across the entire storage environment, implement utilisation improvement process, create operations practice and align service delivery."

He added: "It is positioned to help enterprises address their growing storage challenges."

`Awards' to cos for using solutions

IT leaders, who put Symantec solutions to innovative use - both in protecting infrastructure and information - were recognised by the company for its `2007 Visionary Awards'. They converged at The Venetian in Las Vegas amidst great fanfare.

The event this year marked the 10th Anniversary of the Visionary Awards and incidentally coincided with the 25th anniversary of Symantec Corporation.

The awardees represented a wide range of industries and geographies and included IT leaders from Baptist Health South Florida, Chevron Information Technology Company, GE Global Infrastructure Services, Honeywell Aerospace, ING Investment Management group, The Netherlands Ministry of Defense, Sistema Usiminas and Wipro Ltd.

Greeting the awardees, the Chairman and CEO of Symantec, Mr John W. Thompson, said the visionary award winners demonstrated their success by leveraging Symantec technology to protect their information and systems.

Conceding to IT being the centre of every business in a connected world, he pointed out that businesses today were more focused on managing risk rather than the business itself. "The exponential growth in information is fuelled by growth in connectivity, infrastructure complexity, security and performance".

Managing risk

To enable organisations manage IT risk, Symantec took a number of initiatives such as providing storage solution by addressing platform, administration (managing growth and complexity) and business problems, in security protection and managing technology. It has rolled out `Storage United' with Veritas data centre software, which helps users manage storage issues.