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R09DTS(Data Storage)-Imation Special Advertising Section Reprinted from the September 2004 issue of Business 2.0
®
©
2004 Time
Inc. d
Data storage is like the family sedan of
information technology: Its something
most of us cant live without and none
of us get terribly excited by. Laptops,
iPods, and wireless PDAs get the maga-
zine covers; storage products get buried
in the back office. Its one technology
we tend not to think about much. Thats
too bad, because the right storage prod-
ucts, used wisely, can provide a big
boost to a companys efficiencyand its
bottom line.
If enterprises havent thought hard
about storage, its easy to understand
why. With storage prices dropping
roughly 20% each year, businesses that
need more storage have just gone out
and bought more. But as these same
businesses are starting to discover, get-
ting the biggest bang for your storage
buck isnt quite so simple. Indeed, even
as storage productsthe disks and tapes
we use to save our dataget cheaper,
the total cost of ownership has risen.
Thats because storage is often not
implemented efficiently: Expensive stor-
age systems are used when cheaper
solutions would suffice; haphazard stor-
age policies make vital data hard to
access; and vast amounts of space are
wasted on noncritical files like MP3s and
video clips.
A smart storage strategy isnt just a
wise moveits an essential one. The data
that enterprises need to store is increas-
ing exponentially, but storing it is just the
beginning. Business demandsalong
with an increasing array of government
regulationsmean that information needs
to be easy to access and carefully tracked.
At the same time, businesses are no
longer handing over blank checks to IT
departments. Storage solutions dont only
have to be efcient; they have to be cost-
effective too. Fortunately, new products
and tools, combined with some savvy
strategy, make it possible for you to build
a storage infrastructure that not only
works better but also saves you money in
the process.
A Tiered Approach
A prerequisite for any smart storage
strategy is to adopt what is known as
tiered storage. What this means is that
you use different types of storage media
for different types of information, put-
ting your highest-value data on your
highest-performanceand typically
highest-costmedia. For example, mis-
sion-critical datathe information to
which you need immediate accessis
stored on high-cost, high-speed disks,
while less critical datasuch as back-
upsis stored on lower-cost, lower-
speed media like tape. This enables
your storage dollars to go much further
because you use the expensive media
only when you need it.
Making tiered storage an even more
inviting proposition is the fact that low-
cost storage doesnt mean low perform-
ance. Tape technology has been around
for over 50 years, but its really in a state
of resurgence now, says Jim Milligan,
executive director of strategy and busi-
ness development at Imation Corp. Were
seeing big improvements not only in
capacity but in transfer ratethe speed at
which tapes read and write data. Theres
plenty more to come. Imation has invest-
ed $50 million in its new Tera Ångstrom
Special Advertising Section
S2
Tape technology has been around for
over 50 years, but its really in a
state of resurgence now, says
Jim Milligan, executive
director of strategy and
business development
at Imation Corp,
Illustrations: Erik Mausser technology, which is expected to boost
the capacity of tape cartridges from
todays industry standard of between
60GB and 200GB to beyond a full ter-
abyte by the end of the decade. (To put
that in perspective, one terabyte is the
equivalent of 1 million megabytes of
data, or 16 days of continuously run-
ning DVD movies.)
What makes this possible is an
advanced, super-smooth tape coating
that dramatically increases the density
of bits and tracksor, in laymans
terms, squeezes more data onto the
tape. This summer Imation will start
shipping the first products based on
its Tera Ångstrom technology, 100GB
and 200GB tape cartridges that will
retail for $80 to $100. The company
plans to work with the largest tape-
drive manufacturers to create tape
cartridges and drives capable of
recording terabyte-type capacities.
Todays drives cant record at this
level, but we are working with indus-
try leaders to help make that hap-
pen, says Milligan.
On the other end of the spectrum
the higher-cost, easily accessible stor-
age used for critical datasavvy enter-
prises are embracing the notion of
networked storage, which lets them
consolidate their frontline storage in
one place instead of distributing it
piecemeal throughout the business.
That allows for vastly improved ef-
ciencies. Most companies dont share
disk space among their departments;
typically theyll have storage dedicated
to the nance departments server,
storage dedicated to the sales teams
server, and so onand theyre paying
dearly for it. One department will con-
stantly need to add storage, while
another department sees its space
going largely unused. Shared storage
lets you better manage and leverage
your storage investment.
In the end, building a first-rate
storage system will take less money
but more thought than you probably
expected. The result may not turn
headsbut it can help you turn
profits.
Special Advertising Section
100
200
300
400
500
600
Sour
ce: Gartner Dataquest
800
$900
700
2000
Mainframe SRM
2001
2002
2003
2004
Projected
Millions
2005
2006
2007
Distributed SRM
SAN management
Provisioning
U.S. corporations are expected to continue to invest
heavily in storage-resource-management software.
Big Spenders
S3 Imation Corp
1 Imation Place
Oakdale, MN 55128-3414
651-704-4000
888-466-3456 phone
800-537-4675 fax
info@imation.com
For More Information About
Imation Data Storage products
and Services, visit:
www.imation.com
52-0002-7962-1