Tip of the Week: 4 Steps to Determine Your Needed Data Storage

In order for your business to effectively use
its technology, you need to consider your data storage capabilities. You need
to make sure that you’re in the Goldilocks zone (not too much, not too little,
just right) in terms of your storage space in order to avoid issues. For this
week’s tip, we’ll review some of the things you need to ask in order to
optimize your business’ data storage.

Regardless of the industry you are in, your
business’ storage situation needs to be taken into account. You wouldn’t want
unsightly cleaning supplies out in the open because you lacked the space to
keep them, would you? Or, consider the inventory that you might need to store.
Either having too little or too much space will have some impact on your
business’ finances, and it won’t be good. The same can be said of your
business’ data, and how you store it.

How to Manage Your Business’ Data

Data plays a key role in every aspect of your
business, which means that a lot of it will need to be stored - and more so
than that, it needs to be stored in a purposeful way that will ultimately
benefit your organization. As technology has advanced, so have data storage
solutions… a trend which shows no sign of stopping.

Traditionally, there has been a three-tiered
model for data storage. There are the storage facilities themselves, the
servers that enable users to leverage these facilities, and the networking that
allows access to the stored data. In order to leverage these solutions, a
business would need to have a precise understanding of what their data storage
needs would be for up to the next five years. Of course, with business moving
as quickly as it does today, it can be hard to predict the next five hours, let
alone five years.

This is a large part of why businesses are
shifting to better, more modern alternatives. The hyperconverged IT framework
was designed to simplify data centers and make the physical hardware businesses
rely on more scalable, and cloud computing provides businesses with access to
their needed resources for what can be a very reasonable, budgetable monthly
payment.

In short, today’s businesses have options, but
it is also crucial that these options are weighed properly. Make sure you take
the following four considerations into account:

1. What is my needed capacity?
   - While today’s solutions are far more easy to scale to a business’ needs
   than in the past, it will help to have some idea of how much storage you
   anticipate to be necessary. Having too little or far more than you need
   are both situations you will want to avoid.
2. Where does my IT currently stand? - As you plan for your business’ future, it will be helpful to
   fully appreciate where you are starting from. Analyzing your current
   infrastructure and determining what needs to be improved will help you to
   gain this invaluable perspective.
3. Which configuration will best meet my performance
   requirements? - Between speeds and storage
   capacities, the solutions available to you can vary wildly. Keeping your
   intended use of these solutions in mind will help you to select your best
   option.
4. What about my backups? -
   Any business that depends on data (which means any business) should have
   some kind of backup plan to protect this data and, by extension, the
   business itself. Your data backup strategy will have considerable
   influence on the storage solution you select.

Any solution you adopt in your business, data
storage or otherwise, should be selected with care and consideration. After
all, you need these solutions to work for you, not against you. The
professionals at Emerge have plenty of experience in dealing with the
solutions that will work best for you, including your data storage options.
Give us a call at 859-746-1030 today to identify the data storage and other
solutions that best fit your needs.