Robust Times Ahead for Storage Management but challenge will be having Skilled Manpower

With all the hype around automating solutions to the enterprise challenges of today, it should not be a surprise to anyone in the industry that consolidation is occurring. Some technologies can provide automated solutions to challenges in the industry, like thin clients and virtualization of resources from the storage to the host operating system platform. However, the simple challenges of provisioning storage within an enterprise still require a knowledgeable storage administrator who will carve out the right storage space for the right system, to deliver the required environment to meet the needs of the application or user - performance, scalability, reliability or availability.

Each enterprise has similar but different goals and ways of doing business, which we can call the process. In the coming times, we can see automation technologies handling some of the simpler tasks in an enterprise; but even the simpler tasks using the best-of-breed tools will require rules to operate efficiently and correctly. These rules can be tuned to meet the needs of a specific enterprise, which is where the people come into play.

Aligning all these areas with the value of the information and then prescribing rules to the way the environment is supposed to work and what to do if it is not working correctly requires human involvement. One of the important area for Storage Administrator involvement is in Storage Planning,data protection, or backup and replication space.

I remember a story that I heard in college about the automobile manufacturers all moving to robotics in their manufacturing plants and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in personnel payroll and benefits only to find that each robot costs millions of dollars and requires a well-paid administrator to keep the robot going, whereas hiring several skilled human beings costs the same as the robot administrator and the robot itself.

Why am I focusing on this topic in the blog today? I am interested in the gap between people and technology. The storage management technologies that are available in the market today are great, but they require a skilled manpower as an administrator and tuning to fulfill the goals of the organization and return the maximum value.

Plz comment and let me know if you agree with my thoughts or have a different point of view.