Massive data growth and long retention periods of fixed-content data is changing the landscape of enterprise data storage and is challenging storage administrators to deliver a cost effective storage strategy. Organizations must manage the escalation in the physical quantity of storage, the reliance on universal access to information, the growing complexities of storage environments, and the accelerating emergence of various technologies.

Storage management – or managing the flow/volume of data – is not unlike the way you manage tap water flowing from a faucet: you can either notch the faucet back or you can try and control the volume of water once it’s flowed out. Actually, as this paper will show, it’s not an either-or situation – it’s important that you base your storage management strategy on both approaches, integrating data deduplication, virtualization and HSM technologies with a Storage Resource Management [SRM] tool.