Understanding the IBM TotalStorage Open Software Family

14 Understanding the IBM TotalStorage Open Software Family

and respond to fluctuating market conditions in real time, and provide products

and services to customers on demand. IBM has been developing services,

technologies, and integrated solutions that support on demand capabilities, and

we are focused on helping our customers become on demand businesses. As

technology advances, the price to performance ratio drops: simply put,

customers get more for the same price.

1.3.3 Storage on demand

There is a direct correlation between a storage environment and the

performance of a business. As organizations have become more reliant on

information, the storage resources have become the backbone of on demand

operating environments. Responsiveness, focus, resilience, flexibility, and

profitability are the hallmarks of a healthy organization that is supported by an on

demand operating environment enabled by process integration, reduced cycle

times, collaboration, efficiency, and cost effectiveness. All of these variables are

influenced by the quality, availability, and timeliness of information. The

performance and availability of storage environments will either enhance or

hamper the impact of these variables. And, as on demand operating

environments become even more in demand, the importance and reliability of

storage infrastructures increases exponentially.

The on demand environment

The increasing complexity of IT environments, coupled with our volatile

economic climate, has forced businesses to consider ways in which to

consolidate IT infrastructure and resources. The need to simplify is driven by

promised gains in productivity, efficiency, user satisfaction, and return of

investment (ROI). With hardware costs having decreased just as the need for

storage has increased, customers have met the challenge by throwing more

hardware at the problem. The increasing need for storage has led to the further

complication and expansion of the IT infrastructure and an increased

administrative burden on already overtaxed IT staff. Resisting the temptation to

create a more expansive storage environment requires storage consolidation,

which is essential for achieving real-time competitiveness at the enterprise level.

The on demand approach is described in Figure 1-4 on page 15

Chapter 1. Understanding storage concepts 15

Figure 1-4 The on demand environment

Building an on demand storage environment

Creating a more efficient storage infrastructure will yield substantial gains in IT

productivity, enable new capabilities for information use, and facilitate real-time,

on demand competitiveness. The cost savings and service quality gains from

consolidation of, and investment in, your storage infrastructure represent a

compelling value proposition. Tivoli Storage Management solutions increase

storage efficiency and security by providing holistic, automated management of

storage infrastructures, reducing administrative burdens and improving ongoing

cost reduction efforts.

The storage challenge

Without the proper amount of storage, IT teams struggle to allocate disk

resources. They wind up spending valuable time moving data in order to balance

business process support and application development testing. In

heterogeneous, broadly distributed environments, disk utilization can vary wildly.

Some servers require constant upgrades while others run at 20-30% utilization.

Islands of independent storage resources, when found, can save companies

costs of buying new hardware or software, but how do you locate them?

As complexity in the operating environment increases, storage administration

becomes a huge bottleneck and IT staffs are thrown into a constant fire drill to

meet the on demand needs of local and mobile users, customers, partners, and

vendors, all of whom require immediate access to data. To add to the mounting

storage challenges we face, it will require vast amounts of storage to hold

everything from transactions to employee e-mails and instant messages, along

Flexible Financial & Delivery Options

ENTRY

ENTRY

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Transformation

On Demand

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