Around 100 Booths at Storage Expo UK

Research by Storage Expo has found that the top data storage challenge facing organisations is how to implement the right disaster recovery strategy (83%). The second most important issues of concern to the 252 organisations covered in the research was ensuring data security for the business (82%) and third was the management of increasing volumes of data (81%). Centralising data access was a concern for 79% of organisations closely followed by how to store data cost effectively (77%). Ensuring compliance with the latest data storage legislation and knowing what regulations to comply with are of concern to 68% of organisations. Achieving interoperability across existing storage solutions was an issue for 60% of organisations.

Storage Expo 2008 at the National Hall, Olympia on the 15th and 16th October is the UK’s definitive event for data storage, information and content management. The show features over 100 of the world’s top storage and information management vendors and an extensive, cutting-edge free education programme with over 62 experts speaking on the latest issues.  

With the sheer rate of data growth, organisations increasingly have to look at how they store, manage and protect all kinds of information and data, from its creation, through to archiving and final destruction. The event will enable visitors to compare the latest products, services and solutions all under one roof, providing the ideal opportunity to assess how to incorporate the latest storage and information management technology into their organisations IT infrastructure.

The free to attend keynote sessions at Storage Expo bring together the industry’s leading independent experts, analysts and end-users from high profile corporations and take an in-depth look at some of the latest trends in data storage and information management today. The programme for 2008 has been expanded to reflect the needs of today’s data storage professionals and information management experts as they become as concerned with information and data management as they are with storage capability, scalability and infrastructure.  With strategic and technical analysis, case studies and storage management reviews, this years programme will reveal expert knowledge of how information management can increase both storage efficiency and information utilisation.

The keynotes at Storage Expo reflect the change in the data storage and information management landscape, here is a selection of what’s on offer at the show:

Martin Taylor, Converged Network Manager, Royal Horticultural Society, commented: “Assessing data storage providers and their products could be likened to navigating a ship though a field of icebergs . There are just so many different offerings in the marketplace which all claim to be the right solution for your organisation and only the top ten percent of potential purchasing issues are visible above the waters surface. During this keynote I intend to share some of the knowledge I gained when carrying out an extensive research project over six months to determine the best solution for the RHS’s data storage needs.”

Martin Taylor, Converged Network Manager, Royal Horticultural Society will give his view on Storage from the Ground to the Cloud; a Root and Branch Review of Storage at the Royal Horticultural Society in his opening address. The Royal Horticultural Society annual shows are as synonymous with the British summer as rainy picnics and losing at the cricket. Behind the scenes the RHS has vast amounts of data, over 200,000 botanical images of 50Meg+, and a library dating back 200 hundred years that needs to be digitalised. The challenge for the RHS has been to implement a network that is energy efficient, able to grow with the data burden, and provide sound availability and DR – whilst being cost effective. Addressing many of the issues that all companies face, in this session you will learn how history is being captured and preserved – whilst keeping an eye on the technology, capabilities and needs of the future.

Theresa Regli, Principal, CMS Watch commented: "With management of increasing volumes of data and centralizing data storage as core concerns for enterprises today, a sound strategy for data classification is of increasing importance. Increasingly, data classification is determined based on intended use of data, rather than simply its subject matter or source. Classification is vital to ensure data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands and security protocols are met, and to facilitate enterprise-wide search, retrieval and discovery. The task to expeditiously classify data can be daunting, but organizations that make the effort reap the rewards."

Theresa Regli, Principal, CMS-Watch will examine data classification and ask can anyone really do it?  Data Classification is the categorisation of data based on technical, administrative, legal and economic drivers. Optimised classification allows for tiering, access control, accurate retention and archiving scheduling, streamlined retrieval and discovery. Data Classification policies should be constructed with both business and technical considerations in mind. This session explores the criteria and policies that should be in place to assure coherent classification, and explores why most organisations struggle to tag information correctly for optimal use in the future.  Bob Plumridge, Member of the Board of Directors, SNIA Europe and Edward Wood, Director of Information Services, House of Commons Library will also give their insight into the challenges of data classification.

A survey of 875 organisations by Storage Expo has found that the main driver of their current storage policy is storage effectiveness (60%) necessitated by the need for reliability, scalability and access speed. The second most important driver was Storage efficiency (33%) resulting to cope with cost vs. capability. The least popular drivers were Green criteria (7%).

Jon Collins, Service Director, Freeform Dynamics commented: “This is quite fascinating, and confirms a trend that we have seen in other studies: that organisations are prioritizing effectiveness over efficiency when it comes to setting policy and making purchasing decisions. It is not that cost is unimportant – far from it – rather that the more important criteria relate to ensuring the right tools for the job, and the delivery of appropriate services to the business.”

Jon Collins, Service Director, Freeform Dynamics leads a panel on Architecting for Effectiveness and Efficiency. With data storage volumes still growing at over 50% per annum, the need for efficient Storage architecture has never been greater. Aside from the capital invested in storage-ware procurement, increased data storage equates to significant energy utilisation:- with a corresponding cost and carbon footprint burden. In this session, representatives from six of the leading storage companies in the world will discuss their interpretation of the drive for efficient architecture, now and in the future. 

Jon is joined by:

• Adam Thew, Storageworks Director for UK&I, HP
• Adrian Groeneveld, Director of Product Marketing EMEA, Pillar Data Systems
• Ian Masters, UK Sales and Marketing Director, Double-Take Software
• Johannes Kunz, Senior Director for Solutions Marketing and Business Development EMEA, Hitachi Data Systems
• John Rollason, Product Marketing Manager EMEA, NetApp
• Mark Kenealy, Director Technology Solutions, EMC

Ian Masters, UK Sales & Marketing Director, Double-Take Software commented: “As a software vendor in the storage and data arena, I will be looking at effectiveness from a different perspective to the other panellists, by analysing the different ways of using data and storage more efficiently within the business.  I am very excited to be participating as one of the panel on ‘Architecting for Efficiency‘ at the StorageExpo 2008 event”.

Steven Shaw, ICT Manager, British Horseracing Authority commented: “I will be talking about how Virtualization came to the rescue for the British Horseracing Authority’s growing server estate, under utilized assets, staging/testing environment and how Virtualization became a fundamental part of the companies Business Continuance strategy. With increased demands in Horseracing regulation the British Horseracing Authority with its 300+ employees has to ensure high system availability for it’s geographically spread staff across Great Britain, over and above standard working hours, while optimizing resources and IT expenditure”.

Virtualisation has seen a dramatic adoption in recent years, and the qualitative benefits of flexibility, recoverability and assurance are well known. John Abbott, Chief Analyst, The 451 Group will lead a panel on Improving Asset Utilisation with Virtualisation which will explore the benefits of separating the physical configuration from application, highlighting how virtualisation can deliver benefits to your organisation across national or global networks – and will show how to quantify the benefits to your organisation in terms of provisioning and cost.  The panellists include Alex Mittell, Systems Administrator, Network Systems Management Services, Oxford University with Steven Shaw, IT Manager, British Horseracing Authority and Dr Zafar Chaudry, Director of Information Management and Technology, Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation trust

Simon Robinson, Research Director for The 451 Group looks at how to reduce your data footprint with de-duplication. Data De-duplication is a method of reducing storage needs and boosting efficiency by eliminating the inherent data redundancies that exist in many traditional storage and data protection processes, such as backup. Accordingly, de-duplication has been heralded as one of the most exciting emerging technologies in the storage market, and reports from some of the first organisations to have deployed it appear to substantiate this excitement. In this keynote Simon Spence, CIO, CB Richard Ellis and Steve Bruck, Infrastructure Architect, Associated Newspapers, both from organisations that have implemented de-duplication technology, will share their experiences and discuss whether the reality really does live up to the hype.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Principal, CMS Watch commented: "eMail is the data type that nobody wants to know about – it’s a huge problem. The storage teams don’t want to know, the mail teams don’t know how to cope, and the compliance issues grow just as fast as the email volumes. Corporate eMail is a ticking legal and IT timebomb."

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Principal, CMS-Watch chairs a keynote with Duncan Scott, CIO, DTZ which tackles email management and archive. eMail is arguably the most important business application that any organization runs, yet bringing control to the email flood, remaining compliant with increasingly unforgiving regulations and making sense of divergent technology solutions to tame the email beast is a near impossible undertaking. At one end of the equation is the issue of Back Up and Disaster Recovery, alongside Storage and Server Optimization – but at the other end the business units are demanding Policy Management, Monitoring and eDiscovery for all mail and messages. How to balance the needs of both and build out a cost effective and efficient solution is something that is tasking many organizations. Drawing upon current independent and global research, this session will share best and worst practices along with a no holds barred examination and evaluation of the current archiving and management technologies in the marketplace.

Andrew Reichman, IT Infrastructure Analyst, Forrester Group, leads a debate on growing with clustered storage. The concept of pay-as-you-grow storage makes business sense for most organisations when looking at medium storage policy. This session looks at the advantages of clustered storage in terms of performance, availability, capacity, connectivity, accessibility and costing; and through case study analysis identifies the technological hurdles that can be overcome with the implementation of Clustered Storage to meet business needs.  Panelists include Graeme Hackland, IT Manager, Renault F1 Team; Darren Sykes, Technical Architect, CSR; David Mountford, VP of IS, CSR and Russell Grute, Head of Marketing Services, Pharos.

Data back-up is an essential part of any responsible organisations storage strategy. In the keynote on Protecting Your Data with Back-Up Strategies led by Michael Barwise, Strategic Information Security Intelligence, will explore the strategies that global companies have employed to ensure the availability and recovery of their information. Case studies will be discussed by Graeme Walker, Senior Systems Engineer, Carlsberg and Dylan Matthias, Unix and Storage Manager, Britannia Building Society that look at the rationale and technology behind what are the best back-up solutions in the world.