How to survive the data deluge

IT Week: As UK managing director of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), what do you regard as the biggest challenge currently facing enterprise storage managers?

Steve Murphy: The amount of new data coming into the datacentre is increasing by around 75 to 80 percent on average every two months. Unfortunately, where the answer used to be to throw money at it, simply buying more capacity is no longer an option. Customers need to look at storage virtualisation to get their capacity utilisation up and make sure they sweat their assets in a more intelligent way.

Where is all this data coming from?
Demand for more capacity is being driven by the proliferation of unstructured data into the datacentre, combined with regulatory compliance issues. For example, from September the Data Retention Directive will require telecommunications companies to store details not just of who is calling whom, but what web sites they go to, and keep that information for a minimum of two years. They need to tag it, classify it and be able to retrieve it in a specific timeframe, and that requires a tiered storage environment.

How much of your business does managed services account for?
About 20 percent in the UK, most of which is in the low-end data storage tiers where customers find it difficult to devote the time needed to ensure data is kept compliant. We offer those managed services in partnership with systems integrators; we capture data as it comes in, put classification tags on it and apply service level agreements [SLAs].

HDS is known primarily for its disk arrays. How have you acquired the ability to offer complete end-to-end storage solutions?
HDS acquired an archiving company [Archivis] last year, and has both high-end and mid-range SAN solutions as well as virtual tape libraries (VTLs). On top of that we have a deal with CommVault to supply backup software, and an exclusive arrangement with BlueArc to supply enterprise NAS [network-attached storage] equipment. NetApp offers similar products, but BlueArc provides a much smaller footprint.

How does HDS differentiate itself from rivals such as EMC, IBM and NetApp?
It’s all about providing the right services and technology. We will go to solid state [media] in the future, for instance, and look to improve data SLAs. We are also focusing on thin-provisioning, which is something EMC will not offer [in its enterprise class arrays] until 2008 and IBM is even further away from.

About Steve Murphy
Steve Murphy is UK managing director of HDS, having joined from rival EMC.
His career in IT also includes senior executive roles at Oracle, Fujitsu-Siemens and Sun.