Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2017.  Read them in this 9th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Don Mead, SVP Marketing & Partner Enablement, SVA Software

Top Virtualization and Cloud Predictions for 2017

As we look back at 2016 in preparation to look ahead in the virtualization and cloud landscape, it helps to identify current pain points that must be overcome for virtualized environments to perform optimally. Much of the challenge comes from the massive quantities of data that today's organizations must contend with, which reveals the importance of companies finding a way to wrap their arms around all of this information to evaluate, understand, and optimize their storage infrastructure.

This is why my 2017 predictions focus on the fact that the most competitive and successful organizations will ensure that their full range of applications retain high performance and reliability across diverse platforms - while minimizing the complexity and expense of this infrastructure performance management. With this in mind, let's take a closer look at some key trends for storage and the virtualization environment in the coming year:

• Single solution. Many administrators have learned the hard way that relying on more than one storage management tool can complicate the process, resulting in narrow views rather than the big picture of the data center. 2017 will be the year in which companies that care about managing costs and creating greater efficiencies will choose to use just one tool that can provide the relevant details they need on the capacity, performance, and throughput needs of their IT environment.
  

• Ongoing monitoring. Another watchword of the New Year will be effective monitoring. The storage management and monitoring tool that you use should provide you with the ability to truly visualize your storage environment so that you can optimize it. You need a solution that reveals more than the forest-you need to be able to see the trees and leaves too so that you understand exactly how your data storage is being used. Having that insight will allow you to make smart decisions to improve your virtualized data center performance in 2017 and beyond.
  
  
• Quick pinpointing. One specific tool that I expect to grow in popularity in the coming year since it is particularly valuable in this regard is BVQ. I think of BVQ as akin to having "Google Earth" pinpointing capabilities for your storage infrastructure. The BVQ tool allows you to both see the big picture from above, so to speak, as well as being able to zoom in close up to study the smallest details. It's an extremely powerful approach in that it helps illuminate answers on the best way to optimize your storage infrastructure, yet it's not complicated to deploy or use.
  
  
• Accurate assessment. 2017 will also be the year when a growing number of companies realize that they don't need a rocket scientist or expensive IT, storage, and network resources anymore to assess their storage environments. With BVQ, agentless architecture allows you to see data clearly for on-demand analysis so that you can address any application performance issues or bottlenecks to ensure optimal performance for users. BVQ's operational intelligence plays an important role in assessment accuracy as well, which can be invaluable in guiding configuration decisions and driving root-cause problem detection.
  
  
• Health check-up. At the same time that more organizations begin to realize the ramifications of errors like using too many tools, resorting to expensive hardware solutions, and trying to manage their storage infrastructure with limited information, another trend is emerging in parallel. That related trend is that companies are also waking up to the importance of getting a "check-up" to review the health of their IT infrastructure. As 2017 unfolds, expect to see a growing number of administrators protecting their investment in their storage virtualization environment and data protection solutions by performing a health check on their storage infrastructure. Free online tools such as the BVQ Health Check Assessment can help save headaches from the challenges posed by attempting to benchmark and achieve storage performance objectives on your own.
  
  
• Emphasis on insights. Yesterday's storage strategies to try to manage the data deluge were hardware reliant; tomorrow's are based on accessing the intelligence needed to reveal the exact areas that need fixing. Diagnostics are key to generating the insights needed to maximize application performance and keep small problems and bottlenecks from becoming business-impacting disasters. The right assessment tool can give you an inside peek at the resilience, utilization, and performance of your infrastructure as well as monitoring data risk levels. This type of unbiased viewpoint can allow administrators to validate their existing configurations while planning for future storage infrastructure optimization.
  
  
• Cost optimization. The trends above all point to the crown jewel of effective data storage strategies: cost savings. Unlike pricey hardware solutions, moving your applications onto the right storage tier can help keep your system running smoothly while reducing costs. As we leave 2016 behind, forward-thinking companies will become increasingly unwilling to waste resources when it comes to managing their storage infrastructure. Instead, they'll turn toward solutions that can provide aid by identifying the best performance for their storage while lowering risk and cost. This all becomes possible when you align your business requirements with the proper assets. By utilizing a health assessment tool like BVQ for your storage system, you can identify problematic issues within caches, nodes, and SAN ports alike-while saying goodbye to overuse and aligning workload performance requirements with the lowest cost storage system.
  

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About the Author

Donald Mead SVP Marketing & Partner Enablement, SVA Software

Don has over 20 years of experience developing marketing and partner enablement strategies, he is a technologist at heart and possesses a strong track record of building highly productive organizations for young, fast-growing start-up technology companies. In his role at SVA Software, he is responsible for all aspects of global marketing strategy and execution.

Don joins SVA Software from Virtual Instruments where he was responsible for global partner enablement. Prior to Virtual Instruments he was a member of the founding leadership team at FalconStor Software. Don has held numerous board and chair positions within the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) where he was instrumental in the adoption of iSCSI. He brings a valuable combination of technical and enterprise marketing skills to SVA Software, including his extensive knowledge of cloud computing, infrastructure optimization and storage management.