Top five storage predictions for 2008

Hitachi Data Systems today released its top five storage predictions for 2008 with data de-duplication rated the hottest and most innovative technology to hit the market since virtualization.

The company's ANZ managing director, Mark Kay, said data de-duplication will reach prime time in 2008 as IT managers discover the technology and its benefits.

He said data de-duplication can deliver businesses savings of 10:1, 20:1 and even over 25:1 in terms of storage backups, making retention of large amounts of data for longer periods on disk a viable and attractive option. Hitachi predicts the death of network-based virtualisation and the rise of controller-based virtualisation as it becomes a dominant approach to storage virtualisation in 2008.

Kay said controller-based virtualisation will provide a solid framework for extensions such as thin provisioning and dynamic tiered storage as these technologies also experience success in 2008.

"Looking even deeper into the future, Hitachi predicts that storage virtualisation will be 'de rigueur' and the battles over where it should reside will be resolved," he said.

As the skills shortage worsens, Hitachi believes that it will reach a boiling point in 2008 whereby the effectiveness of storage operations will be severely impacted.

Kay said basic activities such as backup and recovery, DR testing and capacity management will be done poorly, if at all.

"Consequently, Hitachi predicts that we will see a shift in the economics of storage management as companies experience greater cost exposures to information risk, compliance, storage utilisation and IT's responsiveness to business," he said.

"Off-shoring of storage administration activities will increase as a result of the skills shortage, but offshore organisations will face similar challenges." Kay went on to say that efforts to push business continuity and disaster recovery to branch offices and midsize businesses will continue in 2008,

He said there will be huge investments in disk-to-disk backup.

"This technology has already experienced huge success in the Australian market as organisations look to eliminate branch office tape changes and provide faster, more reliable restoration of data from backups," he said.

So what is the number one prediction for 2008? Kay claims data centre problems will worsen before "going green" becomes mainstream.