Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information in Classic, Virtualized, and Cloud Environments, Second Edition

Foreword

In the two short years since we originally published this book, the world as we've known it has undergone a change of unprecedented magnitude. We are now in a digital era in which the world's information is more than doubling every two years, and in the next decade alone IT departments globally will need to manage 50 times more information while the number of IT professionals available will grow only 1.5 times (IDC Digital Universe Study, sponsored by EMC, June 2011). Virtualization and cloud computing are no longer an option for enterprises but an imperative for survival. And Big Data is creating significant new opportunity for organizations to analyze, act on, and drive new value from their most valuable asset — information — and create competitive advantage.

The Information Technology industry is undergoing a tremendous transformation as a result. The Cloud has introduced radically new technologies, computing models, and disciplines, dramatically changing the way IT is built, run, governed, and consumed. It has created new roles such as cloud technologists and cloud architects to lead this transformation. And it is transforming the IT organization from a back office overseer of infrastructure — with the task of keeping it running — into a key strategic contributor of the business with a focus on delivering IT as a service.

All of these changes demand new core competencies within the IT organization and a new way of thinking about technology in the context of business ...