Application management in the datacentre

Big data trends and enterprise apps will drive adoption of flash storage, claims Thomas Pavel

Data volumes appear to be expanding much faster than current IT investments can sustain. And if storing data is a problem for customers, managing and accessing it can be even more of a headache. Real-time access to data is often critical, but HDD is struggling to keep up as enterprise apps multiply.

Network and storage access are two primary areas of infrastructure bottleneck. Meanwhile, network traffic is also expanding. Core apps need to run much faster, and slow apps are a genuine problem for businesses, slowing their responses, ultimately losing them customers and money.

Datacentre managers must address this gap between the budget available and the expanding business requirements.

System acceleration is required, and this is where channel partners could focus, boosting storage – perhaps with SSD, which can greatly improve transaction processing performance and response times.

However, SSD is expensive and not every company can afford to store all its data via flash.

The key may be using the right amount of flash in the right place. This can help control costs, and leaves applications themselves largely untouched.

Appropriate products are available, such as software run at the server level that allows the most frequently accessed data to be copied and saved to a PCIe flash card, reducing millisecond latency to microseconds. This way, a little flash in front of existing HDD can improve data storage and application accessibility. Hardware upgrades can also help deliver these gains.

The opportunity for the channel, of course, is in professional services.

Thomas Pavel is director of EMEA channel sales at LSI