Storage on the hoof
Storage on the hoof
Portable storage is set eliminate the need for business people to have their laptops with them wherever they go. By Stuart Finlayson.
The next step on the gradual shift in Australian business towards a mobile IT environment will be the increasing proliferation of mobile storage devices, but not before a good deal more analysis, development and standardisation.
In a report on the future of the portable storage market, analyst group META predict the widespread use of portable, secure data storage devices is inevitable in the years ahead.John Brand, vice president, technology research services, META Group, explains: "The portable storage market in Australia is very fragmented at the moment. It's a bit like the storage in your house - you can never have enough and you can necessarily find what you want when you need it and it certainly doesn't mean that it's secure."
According to Brand, data security on such portable devices is an issue that needs to be addressed by both the end user and the storage vendors: "People need to be aware of the lack of security in being able to store vast amounts of data on very small storage devices. We believe that those devices will evolve very quickly over the next couple of years into more intelligent devices that allow for more than simply mass storage."
A number of different mobile storage devices are already on the market, ranging from the consumer-oriented memory stick-type devices to USB microdrives. Compact flash and secure digital storage is also on the increase, which allied to the significant increase in the use of laptops and handheld devices in the corporate environment in recent years is driving the move towards the decentralisation of data.
Expected to lead the drive towards standardisation in the market are the companies that supply the infrastructure components that make use of the storage rather than the storage vendors themselves: "The storage device vendors seem to be concentrating on reacting to market need today, while companies like Microsoft and IBM are the ones who are focused on what this [technology] means to the end user computing environment and those companies are spending a fair bit of time and money on trying to work out how to use these mass storage devices in a more intelligent way," says Brand.
One of the difficulties at present - for CIOs in particular - is that the demand for many of these technologies is beyond the technologies' capabilities today, so people want to use these technologies but they are not robust and secure enough for widespread adoption in the market.
This is down to the fact that the end user tends only to hear the positive noises coming from the vendors about what their products can do, without having a handle on the security implications of using such devices, which the CIO knows only too well: "CIOs need to get educated as to what is a reasonable approach to balancing end user demands with the requirements for better corporate governance and the best utilisation of IT assets. Unless you can find a good business case for deploying wireless applications or personal storage devices, you may be succumbing to the end user demands but not really taking into account the requirements of the organisation."
Given that there are some issues to be resolved - especially around data security - before the use of such storage devices can become standard business practise, IDM asked Brand whether the migration to portable storage was being conducted at an appropriate tempo. "I think we are taking it up at a responsible pace, in the sense that we are looking at the convenience issues and the productivity benefits of wireless, as well as the security implications and some of the softer issues around wireless access. I don't think we should be unhappy at the level of wireless take-up, but rather we should be extremely happy that we are looking at these issues in sufficient depth so that we do not race in and potentially do more damage than good."