final thought
MIND THE GAP
Paul Scarrott of Nimble Storage gives his thoughts on overcoming the App-data gap
O
rganisations large and
small are modernising
and transforming
in order to expand
their capabilities and
lead digital projects. As a result, they
are becoming increasingly reliant on
hundreds or even thousands of Apps
to power every conceivable business
process – including sales, marketing,
and product development. In turn,
this has a fundamental impact on
business outcomes, ranging from
customer acquisition, to inventory
management, pricing decisions and
call centre efficiency.
The success of these processes
and outcomes depends on rapid,
uninterrupted access to data. When
something disrupts the delivery of
data to applications it causes a gap
which can negatively impact business
outcomes and hamper organisational
effectiveness. Overcoming that
App-data gap has become critical to
maintaining a competitive edge.
Understanding the gap
At Nimble Storage, we recently
examined the root causes of
application breakdowns across more
than 7,500 companies. It turns out
that just under half (46 per cent) of
all App problems stem from issues
directly related to the storage devices
that feed those Apps, such as
performance and capacity challenges,
software issues and hardware failures.
The majority of problems derive
48
from issues related to the rest of the
infrastructure. These can relate to
compatibility problems, network and
application configuration, server issues,
non-adherence to best practice, and
host-side issues, among many others.
The common denominator is that
over half of application breakdowns
stem from complex infrastructures,
which create an App-data gap
that disrupts data delivery, causing
information to not be instantly
available and processes to slow down.
As today’s organisations become
increasingly dependent on data
to improve customer interaction,
enhance product development and
run the back office, having immediate
access to it is critical to maintaining
a competitive edge. Therefore,
businesses need to look for ways in
which to close the App-data gap, and
take down the barriers to data velocity.
Achieving high
app performance
Optimising storage is one of the
keys to achieving high application
performance and availability. With
a speed that is almost 100 times
faster than traditional disk storage,
many organisations are leveraging
flash to achieve greater data velocity
without the need for countless racks
of equipment. As a result, businesses
are using flash storage to effectively
run a range of applications, including
databases, servers, collaboration to
server and desktop virtualisation Apps.
However, while flash removes
storage performance constraints, it
does not resolve problems related
to the rest of the infrastructure. It
needs to be paired with cloud based
predictive analytics solutions in order to
predict and prevent issues across the
entire application-to-storage stack. By
monitoring the infrastructure on a real
time basis, organisations can not only
anticipate and quickly resolve complex
issues, avert hot spots, and simplify
planning. They can also make long
term predictions as to when they will
need to increase their storage space
and performance, and plan ahead to
do so seamlessly and non-disruptively.
Closing the gap
As storage management becomes
more complex, enterprises are
demanding more from their systems in
terms of performance, availability, agility
and ease of use. New technologies
incorporate features such as flash
optimised architectures and predictive
analytics to address evolving concerns.
By achieving intuitive and complete
visibility of their storage and surrounding
infrastructures, organisations can
determine where barriers lie within the
infrastructure. They can radically reduce
the complexity of infrastructure operations
– freeing up IT resources – improve
performance and capacity, and ensure
business continuity. In other words, they
can close the App-data gap, ultimately
improving business performance, and
becoming more productive.