The industry reflects, looks ahead

Gerald Penaflor, regional sales director, South Asia-Pacific and Korea, Brocade

	Gerald Penaflor, Brocade
	Many companies tend to invest in IT without properly understanding the long-term benefits it can bring to them if properly leveraged.

Q. Name three hot technologies to watch in 2008.
Penaflor: We believe there are four hot technologies to watch in 2008. These include multicore technology and virtualization for servers, storage and files, fabric applications, blade server deployments and power-efficient IT products.

First, multicore technology and virtualization for servers, storage and files are hot technologies because they have altered how customers today utilize and purchase server and storage systems.

Second, fabric applications will also experience growing demand as customers are starting to further leverage existing Fiber Channel SANs (storage area networks) by deploying fabric-based applications such as DMM to start realising the full potential of SANs.

Third, blade server deployments are also set for popularity supported by a big increase in the consolidation of physical servers into virtual servers. This increase has been seen in the number of customers consolidating from standalone servers into bladed server environments. This trend will continue as the processing and memory capacity continues to increase in these environments.

Last but not least, power-efficient IT products will definitely be a hot technology as IT organizations face the critical challenges of continued data growth and limited data center energy resources. As a result, they are turning to more energy-efficient devices to help them reduce their power usage and overall storage costs.

Moving ahead in 2008

 

 

1.	Socializing goes big in 2008
2.	The urge to merge in 2008
3.	New chips on the block
4.	Web threats dominate security landscape
5.	Battle for the mobile platform space in 2008
6.	The industry reflects, looks ahead

Looking back on 2007

 

 

1.	Looking back at 2007 with envy
2.	Predictions that went right and wrong
3.	2007's movers and shakers

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
... There is without doubt more than one challenge facing IT departments. As a matter of fact, there are three key challenges facing IT departments including the scalability of data centers, power and cooling as well as management of unstructured data.

Many data centers are incapable of scaling to meet the challenge of growing data that is becoming increasingly complex. Scaling of data centers is further impeded, as funding and administrative staff remain static.

Today, data centers and computer rooms across the globe consume approximately 2 percent of the world's energy, and the numbers will continue to grow on a daily basis. Rising energy cost and high-density compute equipment has also created power and cooling issues in the data center and increased the carbon footprint in the world. Due to power and cooling issues, many data centers running are also running out of power to process applications that support business growth and needs.

Management of unstructured data is the other challenge. Unstructured data will account for more than 80 percent of all organization-generated information. Lack of strategic framework to manage the proliferation of file base data will drive investments in file virtualization and clustered file systems.

Gartner issued a report warning IT heads to prepare a recession budget. What is your view?
Electronic data is constantly growing and companies are always in need of more storage space that is efficient, reliable and streamlined for optimal performance. IT heads often tend to overlook the cost of storage even though data centers are a critical function of many companies. In a recession budget, an appropriate amount should always be set aside to ensure the smooth running of data centers.

The biggest mistake I see CIOs make is...
... The lack of a long-term strategic plan and resource provisioning when investing in IT. Many companies tend to invest in IT without properly understanding the long-term benefits it can bring to them if properly leveraged. With the demand for data storage on the rise, data storage is something companies can certainly consider as part of their long-term strategic plan.

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