In the world at large, there is a saying that goes: “Often, the old ways are the best ways.” When it comes to managing storage, this can be equally true.

While I don’t often admit it, I am old enough to have worked on and managed mainframes – in a world before networked storage existed. In those days users had limits on the amount of resources they could tie up, and most companies allocated the cost of the users’ consumption back to the department they worked for.

With the advent of PC networks and networked storage, most companies stopped charging users for resource consumption. What happens when you make a valuable resource free to the consumer..? Usage soars. Analysts such as Gartner Group tell us that 20 to 40 percent of what’s stored on most networks is junk – it has no value to the business at all. Why is it there? Because the resource has no limits and consumption is free.

NTP Software has one of the very few storage billing applications available today. Our informal statistics on the net result of going from free to a fair-cost model is that consumption is reduced 10 to 20 percent almost over night and that growth rates are cut in half. When consumers understand that there is a cost associated with their actions, they moderate their behavior.

And... you don’t even need to bill people. Simply publishing the list of the top 25 or top 100 users has a similar effect. For many people, how others perceive them – in this case as resource hogs – is as valuable as cash.

Some times the old ways really are the best ways – even in high-tech.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009 3:18:23 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)      Comments [0]  Management | Observations