iWave Software enables Enterprise IT organizations and Service Providers to build Storage Clouds using their existing storage infrastructure.

Storage Administrators face a daunting challenge. According to industry analysts like the Gartner Group, storage under corporate IT management will grow between 60 and 70 percent in 2011. IDC estimates that by 2020, the storage that IT organizations manage will grow by 20 times, but the staff tasked with supporting that storage will grow by just 1.5 times.

iWave Storage Automator enables Enterprise IT and Service Providers to deliver enterprise storage as a a policy-driven, fully-automated cloud service, by providing:

• Self Service Storage Portal: provides storage consumers such as DBAs, application developers, and server support staff with the ability to submit and track requests for storage as well as advanced storage services such as replication, migrations, etc.
• Storage Services Catalog: provides storage consumers with a catalog of fully-automated storage services. Storage consumers are restricted to accessing the Storage Services that are defined for their particular role(s).
• Fully Automated Storage Services: all storage services defined in the Storage Services Catalog are fully automated and do not require manual effort by a Storage Administrator. Fully automated services can include storage provisioning, reclamation and remediation.
• Enforcement of Best Practices: all storage services are defined using an organization’s best practices for storage administration. Enforcing best practices through automated services enables Enterprise IT Storage organizations to avoid outages caused by configuration errors or failure to follow the proper storage run book procedures.
• Storage Classification: storage administrators can offer services by storage classification. For example, they may offer a fully automated service to provision “gold” or “tier-1” storage for an Oracle CMDB.
• Policy Driven: all services are driven by policies defined by the storage administrator. For example, storage administrators can specify that certain services require approval before they are delivered.
• Fully Audited: each action performed by a fully-automated storage service is recorded in a secure audit log.

Storage Clouds offer a seismic shift for the way enterprises manage IT storage, replacing the old manual, device-centric administration paradigm with an automated, services-centric paradigm, where administrators create fully automated, storage services, set the policy for those services, then monitor the quality of services delivery. Instead of constantly focusing on the minutia of storage operations, IT Storage Support can work closer with their business to identify new opportunities to define automated storage services that provide real solutions to the business’ challenges.

For IT Organizations that make the shift to Storage Clouds, the benefits are compelling:

• Scalable Storage Administration: By automating common storage administration tasks, Storage Clouds can enable enterprise IT organizations to scale their existing storage admin resources to manage the predicted 60+ percent growth in enterprise storage.
• Fewer Storage Outages: the majority of server outages are caused by configuration errors introduced by storage admins or consumers do not follow approved, best practices. Storage Cloud policies can ensure that automated storage services always follow best practices.
• Reduction in Storage Provisioning Times: Storage Clouds can take the time required to provision new storage from days and weeks to minutes, improving the productivity of both storage admins and consumers.
• Improved Customer Satisfaction: faster storage provisioning times and fewer outages equates to happier storage consumers.
• Reduction in Storage Operating Costs: most Storage Clouds pay for themselves in the first 18 months through reduced storage admin labor cost (future hires avoided), productivity gains by storage admins & consumers and in fewer storage outages.

iWave Storage Automator provides IT organizations with a scalable, enterprise-class storage automation platform to build Storage Clouds. For more information, visit the iWave Storage Automator product page.

©2011 iWave Software LLC