Why Every Modern Enterprise Needs a Storage Champion

Has your organisation got a nominated storage champion? If yes, that puts your enterprise in an excellent position. Your organisation must be truly forward-thinking and is most likely benefiting from the latest advancements in enterprise storage capabilities.

If not, perhaps this article will convince you to review that position, because it could be argued that without a storage champion, an enterprise is like a boat without a rudder.

It’s never too late to identify that key individual from a nominated tech professional. They could be a storage admin, an engineer, IT manager, or storage-savvy CIO. Someone who will be passionate about advocating the advantages of enterprise storage across the organisation. Here’s why across today’s AI powered, data driven businesses, having an enterprise storage champion is a prerequisite.

Firstly, unlocking the full value of enterprise storage doesn’t happen on its own. It takes intentional efforts, from a professional that truly understands and is committed to promoting the strategic advantages to be achieved when advanced enterprise storage forms the backbone of an enterprise infrastructure. Someone that thinks of storage infrastructure as a strategic asset, one that drives business outcomes, creates opportunities for cost savings, and holds the keys to whether a ransomware or malware attack takes down the whole company or not. Every enterprise that has modernised, or will modernise their storage infrastructure, needs a storage champion. Let’s consider why in more detail.

Four essential reasons why your enterprise needs a storage champion

1. Benefit from cyber-resilient storage – A storage champion will ensure the organisation is proactively staying on top of cyber storage innovation. This includes being aware of automated cyber protection, the importance of cyber detection on primary storage, 2.5x performance improvement, the lowest latency achievable, hybrid multi-cloud storage integration, and the potential for doubling storage capacity without enlarging the storage array.

2. Benefit from cost reductions in both CAPEX and OPEX – A storage champion will ensure that the full business value of your enterprise storage is being delivered, not just the technical value. It means the difference between having a storage array pay for itself within one year and seeing full alignment of storage with business priorities.

3. Benefit from cross-functional integration – A storage champion will work to reduce data silos and build productive connections with other functions within the enterprise. One of their key functions will be to integrate enterprise storage with the Security Operations Centre (SOC) and implement security monitoring applications to trigger immutable snapshots of data at the first inkling of a cyberattack.

4. Benefit from greater share of budget – Having a dedicated storage champion will increase the likelihood of obtaining 100% funding for storage every year. This becomes possible through their ongoing work to elevate the positive perceptions of storage internally. Rather than being perceived as a sunk cost centre, storage will become a source of cost efficiencies, a means through which funding for new IT projects, such as AI, can be released.

Clearly this is a very significant role. The storage champion in an enterprise has the opportunity to advance future data infrastructure and be seen as a forward-thinking IT leader who is driving positive change. With so many changes happening within cybersecurity, cloud, applications, and AI workloads, an enterprise’s storage capabilities need to keep up, be safeguarded, and be cost-effective. If one of these core pieces is out of balance, the consequences could include wasted time and money, business disruption, or a successful cyberattack that takes down the company. The storage champion is not only an advocate, but a watchman on the wall. Someone who is vigilant and prepared to take swift action when needed.

Benefits of a storage champion – in depth review

Let’s go into more detail about each of these four important benefits in turn.

Reduce silos, build productive, cross functional connections within the enterprise

By collaborating with other people in an enterprise, the storage function can be more integrated with other IT functions and better aligned with business priorities. When the storage champion works with the cybersecurity team or infosec leader, it becomes easier and more efficient to deploy new innovations and to seamlessly integrate enterprise storage and cyber threat monitoring. It is an imperative given the constant threat of cyber-attacks today.

In addition, they will foster greater collaboration with business-line managers, application developers, the networking infrastructure team, and, in cases where the enterprise also offers digital products, salespeople. Over time, this will help to transform the perception of storage from what used to be considered an “invisible” backroom function that strategic IT leaders did not bother about, into a productive partner that will support growth and power the business forward.

Obtaining 100% funding for storage every year

When you optimise your storage infrastructure, you will free-up resources – specifically money and IT personnel. This can make all those leading-edge initiatives that you want and need to do for achieving sustained competitive advantage financially viable. Consolidating your enterprise storage with advanced storage solutions that are pre-built for consolidation and the reduction of CAPEX and OPEX costs can save you a substantial amount of money. This can be diverted towards innovation projects - ones that will drive your enterprise forward.

In addition to consolidation, it is also possible to automate a large proportion of the ongoing storage administration tasks. This reduces the resourcing overhead and makes it much easier to manage the storage infrastructure in the long term, by effectively

allowing the system to manage itself. You can eventually shift to a “set-it-and-forget-it mentality” after extracting the value from your storage infrastructure.

So, if you don’t already have a storage champion, who will they be? And now that you’ve understood the importance of having an enterprise storage champion, what’s next? Try explaining this new approach to your senior IT leadership, or to the CXOs in your organisation.

You will quickly realise that using these arguments will help you evolve conversations about storage funding, by moving the discussion on from being a sunk cost. Rather than just being regarded as a cost centre, enterprise storage will be viewed as a dynamic and mission critical aspect of the enterprises’ infrastructure. One that can be proactively managed to unlock the full business and technical value of the overall IT investment.