Any room at the digital inn?

Covering your options

Going forward, it's unclear which technology deployments will best fit enterprises; the diversity of corporate cultures, legacy equipment issues, and IT budgets all inevitably come into play.

There is, however, consensus on adopting a strategy of vendor independence.

The idea is to leverage discounts through competition. Hammond says industry claims that suggest vendor software A can flawlessly run vendor storage array B are a tad optimistic.

Indeed, it's common practice for IT departments to pen their own scripts to meet shortfalls in software functionality.

Ultimately [vendors] run factories and they want to sell you a car, he says. They want to sell you a car that they make, and not recommend a Ford because they make Peugeots.

What is clear is that large enterprises typically use multiple vendors and the average corporate data centre will run multiple operating systems.

Probably two or three operating systems, Trowbridge speculates. And at least two if not more storage vendors. This is why future-proofing, the industry's jargon for spending money strategically, is in vogue.

The only certainty is change. Procurement officers should hedge bets. In other words, says DataCore's Lenz, put in place a solution that can adapt to changing technologies.

That and asking hard questions. How easy is it for a storage product to adapt when the latest communication protocol comes along… fibre-channel to iSCSI, for example?

If Infiniband takes off will it easily fit into that environment? Does it matter what operating system is at the front end? It probably does.

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Reproduced with the kind permission of Novoscape's ZeroDownTime magazine. ZeroDownTime is the premier business publication for IT professionals whose responsibilities lie in maximising uptime of mission-critical business operations.