Originating Author: David Floyer
Storage services architectures will allow much greater control of the usage of storage resources and functionality. User departments will be happy to pay for storage function which directly improves their business efficiency, such as improved performance. But what happens when a user department wants to cut the cost of (say) remote replication, which impacts the recovery of the organization as a whole? Who should pay if legal are asking for archiving services to protect the company as a whole from being sued? The good news is that storage service architectures can provide transparency to the cost of those services; the current storage architectures often hide significant costs and pass them arbitrarily to user departments. However, the business and IT will have to develop processes that allow key stakeholders to be able to understand the business case for the usage of advanced services, and negotiate and agree funding for them.
Action item: Storage services architectures mean that organizations need to put in place cross-functional processes that will allow discussion and agreement of advanced storage services that affect the organization as a whole.