Users Look Ahead to 2007

Data de-duplication, desktop virtualization, and the realities of tape encryption are just some of the challenges looming for IT managers and CIOs in 2007.

Data de-duplication, in particular, has caught the eye of Jeff Rochlin, manager of server strategy and infrastructure at Disney Worldwide Services. "We see it as a real emerging technology, but I don't know how much of it is in production use yet," he tells Byte and Switch.

A number of vendors such as Avamar, Data Domain, Diligent, and Symantec already offer de-dupe products, and others, such as FalconStor and Sepaton, are getting ready to enter the market. The idea behind the technology is that it can compress data that appears in more than one place, prompting vendors to tout major storage capacity savings. (See Dealing With De-Dupe Doubts and New Wave of CDP Rolls In.)

"In many ways, it's a scary, bleeding-edge thing for us," explains Rochlin, adding that removing so much data from his systems is a major worry. "It's frightening that you have these pointers to the data, rather than the data itself -- if a data corruption happens, you're really messed up."

The exec, though, is weighing these concerns against benefits like reduced storage and faster backups. "The paybacks are enormous," he says. "If we do anything with SAP, it can take 60 hours to restore the data," explains Rochlin, adding that de-duplication could shave 18 to 24 hours off this time.At the moment, Rochlin's staff is still evaluating the data de-duplication offerings on the market, although he's not naming names. "My guys have listened to the stories from a couple of vendors, but we haven't narrowed it down yet."

Virtualization will also be a hot topic next year, although at least one IT manager is shifting his virtual focus from his data center to his desktops. (See Users Talk Virtual Tension, and Data Center Management Goes Virtual.)

"What we're trying to get out of are the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on [replacing PCs] every year, versus the cost of putting a couple of 8- or 16-way servers in our data center," explains Rick Faszold, manager of technical services at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Louis.

The exec, who has already virtualized 75 percent of his data center hardware, is looking to replace 2,000 PCs with thin client devices linked via virtualization software from a vendor such as VMware. "In the event that a desktop crashes on a user, instead of sending someone [to fix it], this lets us rebuild the session [from the data center]," says Faszold. "It's much quicker."

St. Anthony's, though, is playing a waiting game. "I am holding off just a little bit longer to see what Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, AMD, and Intel can do," says Faszold, who admits that virtualization needs close scrutiny. "This is fairly new for everyone -- I would hate to miss a technology or licensing detail that would have a significant ramification on the project."Security will stay high on the agenda next year -- surely no surprise. "Data encryption and, specifically, tape encryption is becoming a big issue," explains Jeff Winters, a systems engineer at Jefferson City, Missouri-based systems integrator Huber & Associates. "There's a heightened sense that people don't want their names in the media for losing customers' information."

Security of tape has come to the fore as mandates like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Sarbanes Oxley take hold.

"Were just starting to get into the realm of HIPAA," explains Kelly Carpenter, technology manager at the Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. The school will soon deploy a library of T10000 encrypted tape drives from Sun to meet growing compliance demands. (See Hospital Skirts Compliance Meltdown, NY Healthcare Picks EMC, and On the Brink of Storage Disaster.)

"All the HIPAA data will be on encrypted tape only," he explains. "If it falls off the back of a truck, it will be too expensive for someone to decrypt." (See A Tale of Lost Tapes and The Year in Insecurity.)

The IT manager admits, though, that the encryption market is nowhere near as mature as he would like, particularly when it comes to the keys used to encrypt and decrypt the data: "I would like to see a broader set of key management capabilities [from vendors]. At this point, you have got to go with some sort of proprietary thing."Security specialist NeoScale has already made some noise about this issue by teaming up with Symantec, Optica Technologies, and Entrust, but Carpenter wants more from vendors. (See Multivendor Management Locked Up and All Keyed Up With NeoScale.) "It would be good if you could have something open-source that would be your key manager," he says. "But then it would get back to whether the manufacturer of the gear would certify an open source key management system."

— James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch