There are two things in life that are guaranteed: death and taxes. I
will add a third – storage space. Using a computer or tablet will
continue to require more storage. The longer we stay employed as an IT
professional we are going to need more storage. Yesterday’s storage
requirements would fit on today’s portable thumb drives and tomorrow’s
storage needs are likely to be factors larger than today’s. So how are
we going to acquire the knowledge we personally need to insure our
requirements are met? And how are we, as IT Trainers, making sure that
we have training skilled people to look after this important asset?
To
support the idea that storage has become an IT training issue, not just
an IT issue, more and more of the training press is highlighting
storage. For example, a recent article in Certification magazine states
“There is an expectation that the number of employees who support and
manage storage will increase over the next two years with nine out of 10
organizations expecting data storage capacity to increase by at least
10 percent and many think they will double the capacity they currently
have.” Our job as IT trainers is to validate the knowledge and skills
necessary of what has been termed “solutions and technologies in data
storage, storage networking, data protection and the underlying
interconnect technologies.” Much of this is done today, but not as a
comprehensive package and not wrapped up and marketed as storage
training.
To be honest, this is a topic I’ve never spent much
time thinking about. I always thought storage problems were solved by
purchasing a larger hard drive. Now I’ve learned that viewpoint is way
too narrow. Components of a storage model are poorly understood and
often poorly managed.
Before we can go out and build the
training programs, it may be useful to get everyone on the same page.
Just like any other enterprise asset, we need to understand the answers
about storage to questions such as:
- Why are our storage requirements increasing?
- Are we building the best, most cost effective storage architecture to meets today’s and tomorrow’s needs?
- Do our vendors who sell us storage components understand how we are using their products?
- What are the industry trends?
- Are the people making storage decisions tied into the overall business processes of the enterprise?
- Do our employees have the skills to meet these needs?
We are the IT Training community and our role is vital in this
issue. As I admitted before, storage is something that I never thought
about but now I am concerned this area is not getting enough attention.
Our industry needs to offer more in the training of personnel around
making sure our data storage needs are understood and that industry
professionals grow as fast as our needs will.
You may have
experienced something different. Maybe you have already sat down and
worked through you storage needs for both today and in the future. If
so, consider yourself lucky. If not, then lets train yourself or other
IT professionals to do so. Ask the questions to the IT staff about our
IT trainers can help support the enterprises rising storage needs. Find
out what makes an IT personal skilled in developing and maintaining a
storage strategy. You’ll be glad especially when you start downloading
all those i-Tunes and blue ray movies! As always, I would love to hear
from you and I look forward to your continued feedback. Feel free to
contact me anytime at aust1648@gmail.com
