Data experts have painted a gloomy outlook for financial institutions and IT firms in the country in view of the expected explosion in information generation in the current cashless regime urging for a simplified storage facility, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt. The experts who gathered at the recent Storage Optimization Summit organized by Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) in conjunction with the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) x-rayed a range of storage enhancement innovations pioneered through their synergy. The innovations according to them can underpin the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) policy on cashless economy by compressing information and reducing costs. Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that statistically, information storage requirements grow between 20-40 per cent annually and may expand to 80 per cent. In the cashless regime, financial institutions may come out worse off because of dearth of simplified storage structures. Oluwaseyi Obiyemi, client technical specialist, IBM West Africa, said that smarter systems are creating information explosion currently in Zettabytes, citing that companies that budgeted one to five per cent for storage facilities are presently struggling to maintain the tempo with attendant costs. The client technical specialist, stated that IBM’s $500 million splash on research and development annually has been yielding positive results in terms of a range of apparatus it produced to contain the looming danger of data loss by companies. He said: “Very few banks have good back up solution recovery of data; that is, their backs up automated machines are not optimally perfect. Basically, big organizations that don’t attach much importance to data might not really know the harm. However, IBM solutions are cost effective technologies meant for data compression and duplications. “In other words, we are looking at companies having the right information at the right places, while managing space. Through automated tiering, automated data migration, banks can store more with what is on the floor by virtualization and thin provisioning. This will save the corporate bodies some stress, litigation and loss of valuable data”. Obiyemi said Obiyemi added that IBM’s Storwize V7000 can help corporate bodies simplify complex IT infrastructure, particularly to lower ongoing costs, improve flexibility and reduce demands on technical staff. Nodding in agreement, Emeka Udaya, storage business development manager, Tri-Continental Ltd, said that the challenges of data protection spurred by data growth in the last few months has exposed the incapacity of storage facilities, that take longer time to back up. He said that “Apart from that, some companies thought they could maneuver the situation by acquiring more storage facilities like disks, but they end up in higher service land requirements (spaces for the facilities). “And the need to keep data intact could be envisaged in the banks merger and acquisition that deal, particularly with existing data; security challenges; remote or branch offices operation and back up on silos-the cost of managing tapes attached to servers are increasing by the day,” he added. Udaya mentioned a number of solutions the synergy between Computer Warehouse Group and IBM have introduced under Trivoli Storage Manpower to include, TSM Server products, Bare Machine Recovery; Desktop/Laptop; Application protection and Space management archiving. Earlier, Dayo Abegunde, general manager, CWL Systems; a subsidiary of CWG, said with evolving delivery models, the IT industry is changing, particularly for the banking sector that is engaged in outsourcing, low head count, managed service. Meanwhile, “Delivery requirements must be demonstrated with better or enhanced platform.” Abegunde, who represented the Austin Okere, group chief executive officer, Computer Warehouse Group, noted that although the resources spent on IT by organization has continued to grow, however, ‘keeping the Light On, demands strategizing. He said that CWG in collaboration with IBM, a renowned leader and pioneer in the IT industry, organized the summit geared towards educating their customers on how to achieve better storage utilization and sharing of data across servers’ clients while helping to lower the risks and costs associated with the installation of a SAN solution. He said this will bring about, “Lower lifecycle costs thanks to innovative storage architectures that lower both capital and operational expenses; virtualized storage in order to reduce skills requirement; easy tie-ring to match value of data to the cost of the storage system and improved data storage to reduce costs and boost efficiency.”
Cashless Regime: Experts Warn of Dangers of Storage, Ring Solution
