Whitepapers

Uncovering Best Practices for Storage Management

Best practices include consolidation, bi-directional communication between end-user departments and central IT, control of data center operations, and the use of integrated management tools. Through the introduction of a firm-wide storage strategy, careful consideration of best practices and the use of incentives to ensure best practices are consistently applied, it is hoped that firm performance can be gradually improved.

"The rapid increase in corporate spending on information technology (IT) during the last decade and the diversity of IT initiatives that this created, has forced IT executives to devise a set of strategies and management practices to manage the IT assets in their portfolio. Research indicates that in the absence of a clearly defined IT strategy, corporations are at risk of mismanaging their IT resources – overcommitting IT resources in certain areas of the value chain, while other areas are starved of IT support.1 While developing an IT strategy is essential to supporting a business strategy and vital to managing IT for business value, not all corporations approach the development of an IT strategy in the same way. A key-differentiating factor between firms lies in their treatment of the content (or scope) of an IT strategy, and in how the strategy is implemented (e.g., using best practices).2 While developing an IT strategy is itself a best practice, it is only the first in a series of steps designed to enable a firm to better manage the cost of its IT operations and so achieve an increased return on its IT investment. Other best practices such as post implementation reviews serve as a key test of an IT strategy, helping to reduce cost overruns on projects and to reinforce organizational learning around ways of managing key IT initiatives."