july 11

Building a storage transformation road map
CTO of GlassHouse, Jim Damoulakis, writes about the basic components of a storage strategy road map

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=
viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001709&pageNumber=1

A recent e-mail from a reader: You wrote in Computerworld/Storage about building a storage strategy road map. The article illustrated the needs to develop a storage strategy road map but did not address the components of the road map and how to get there. Any feedback on what this looks like, the components of it, and how to achieve it?

Building a road map begins with three elements: a starting point, a destination and an understanding of the gap between points A and B.

A complete picture requires an honest assessment of four areas: people, process, technology and business demands. Typically, organizations have identifiable strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas. From this assessment several strategic initiatives should emerge and a series of projects associated with each initiative identified.

Essentially, the road map is a prioritized timeline of these projects and activities designed to first stabilize key problem areas, then to optimize high priority functions, and finally improve overall manageability of the environment. Prioritization of individual projects should be based on the following criteria:

• Business value – Consideration must be given to the most pressing current problem areas, as well as longer-term service and efficiency improvements. In the world of storage this might include storage availability and recoverability issues, improving processes such as provisioning, or increasing utilization.

• Cost – It is inevitable that some items of high importance will be more costly to achieve than others.

Budget realities need to be weighed may result in pushing some projects further out on the timeline

• Level of effort – How difficult is the project to implement – how long will it take, what resources are required, what is the overall impact from a change management perspective.

• Organizational readiness – Is the organizational structure in place – the right people in the right roles – to ensure project success. This is an area where a surprising number of companies fall short. They invest in technology, but do not establish the organizational functions needed to maximize the value of their investment.

• Internal and external dependencies – A project may depend on the completion of another project on the road map or an event external to the storage road map – a data center expansion, for example.

  
  Here is a high-level example of a 1.5-2 yr road map:

  (Click image to see larger view)

Any road map is highly customized to an organization and should be reviewed and adjusted annually, as required.

Jim Damoulakis is chief technology officer of GlassHouse Technologies Inc., a leading provider of independent storage services. He can be reached at jimd@glasshouse.com.