Digital data is growing by 30 percent a year, according to an informal survey of the Fortune 2000 customers served by Logicalis, a global provider of high-performance technology solutions and a recognized leader in consolidation and virtualization technology. To help IT managers better understand how to assess and manage this growing tsunami of corporate data, Logicalis has developed a white paper, “The Best of Both Worlds: A Strategic Approach to Storage Consolidation,” available immediately for complementary download from www.us.logicalis.com/cv.

As every CIO knows, despite best intentions and planning, it’s tough keeping up with even the most conservative estimates of data growth. No matter how much storage an enterprise acquires, it’s always at imminent risk of filling up. Often, the default behavior is to “just add drives” to the current storage mix. But this is a stop-gap measure at best.

“Throwing drives at growing data requirements will have almost no long range effect,” cautions Logicalis Senior VP Eric Linxweiler. “You’ve got to recognize your storage problem, confront it, analyze it, and then tame it strategically. You’ve got to get past the symptoms and treat the cause.”

“Seven Signs It’s Time to Get Proactive About Your Storage” is a checklist developed by Logicalis as a quick reality check for IT managers suffering from data deluge.

Seven Signs It's Time to Get Proactive About Your Storage

• Your CFO just told you you’re already over budget, but your end users are screaming for more space.
• You lack proper financial modeling for the cost of your storage, so you can’t discuss the TCO of your existing storage or the ROI for additional storage with your CFO.

• You know how much storage you have, but you have no idea how much information you’re storing.
• You treat all data as if it has equal value – and an equal need for immediate retrieval.
• Whether or not you’ll ever need it again, you throw everything into your storage system, MP3 files, JPEGs, PSTs, PPTs, XLSs and PDFs – even rough drafts of documents created years ago.
• Your storage planning is always in crisis mode: when a system starts crashing because it’s out of space, you put in rush orders for more storage rather than implementing a long-range strategy for effective information management.
• Your branch offices operate like independent agencies, and diplomatic relations between the separate data fiefdoms keep breaking down.

Managing the corporate storage tsunami requires enterprise-level decisions about many issues, including how quickly data needs to be made available and how to make choices regarding what data is critical for archiving.

But as the Logicalis white paper makes clear, an organization can end up with dramatic cost savings from a centralized, manageable storage system that is operationally efficient too. “The Best of Both Worlds: A Strategic Approach to Storage Consolidation,” is available immediately for complementary download from www.us.logicalis.com/cv.