Posted on Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Typically the need to balance tightly constrained budgets with “good enough” specifications means that federal IT deployments tend to be slightly compromised in some way. Government bodies are rarely at the forefront of technology – but that seems to be changing.
A new report from Dell EMC suggests that federal agencies are well ahead of their private sector counterparts when it comes to deploying software defined storage. Half of the government agencies questioned were halfway through adopting SDS. Industry on the other hand was well behind with a 36 percent adoption rate.
Why the disparity?
The issue of enormous data volumes is not restricted to private industry – and the government needs to meet the same challenges. Their approach has been to virtualize everything – including storage. And SDS is helping agencies to drive their digital transformation agenda.
According to 60 percent of the bodies surveyed by Dell EMC, increased flexibility and agility of operations and services was the number one reason for adopting SDS. They were also impressed by the ability to create efficiencies, reduce costs and simplify the process of managing data centres built around software defined storage.
Security priorities
The same survey also found that security is the most important factor when designing and deploying services. More than 80 percent of respondents reported security as their priority, well ahead of the 61 percent who cited cost savings as being “very important”.
The ability to control and apply encryption on the fly, at software level, makes SDS extremely attractive – particularly for agencies obsessed with securing the data they hold. Obviously something the private sector could also adopt as they seek to protect IP and other sensitive information.
SDS and cost control
Although federal agencies appear to be spending more where necessary to improve security, there are still ways to keep costs low when deploying SDS. The platform independent nature of SDS allows for redeployment of existing storage assets for instance, reducing capital outlay on new equipment.
And backed by a suitable third party maintenance contract, organizations (private or public) can keep older assets in place for longer. Taking this approach allows businesses to claim all the advantages of SDS, whilst minimizing the costs typically associated with a new IT deployment.
Wth the government leading they way, perhaps it is finally time for the private sector to take notice of SDS.
Next steps
To learn more about maximizing your existing assets in an SDS deployment, please get in touch.