The most basic, fundamental reason for IT is to manage information; how information is stored and accessed, how information is sorted and delivered, and how information is protected.

Where should you store your data? Today there are many options around storage. Whether you use traditional high performance fiber attached storage arrays or iSCSI storage over Ethernet or even “Cloud” based hosted storage, there are many decisions to be made. These decisions are a balancing act between performance, reliability and cost.

Not all information should be stored the same way. Ten year old archive data stored on expensive high performing solid state disk is an obvious example of misuse and waste, but what if the scenario is less obvious? How can you decide if moving the accounting system to an iSCSI SAN is a good idea? Is keeping the warehouse management system on fiber attached storage the right solution? Will hosted storage work for your file repository?

Data must be accessed.

The traditional file systems aside, most data is created, modified and deleted via applications interacting with databases. This makes databases such as SQL Server and Oracle critical components to the interactions with your data. The data must be well structured, indexed and optimized for best performance. Data is frequently in silos by application. Logically consolidating data into data marts allows business decisions based on a holistic view of the company.

Data must be safeguarded.

What are you safeguarding it from? What level of tolerance for downtime does your company have? Many questions must be answered before the best solutions can be designed for your systems. As with the type of storage you use, the type of protection put in place for your systems can differ from one system to the next.

At STA, our Information Management practice provides you with solutions to all of these challenges. The range of projects we've handled over the course of our 16 years in business has helped us develop a proprietary methodology utilizing industry standards to ensure best practices are met. Regardless of where your information management needs are focused today, STA will provide you with solutions that deliver with absolute assurance; meeting and exceeding expectations.

To back this point up further, we put it all on the line by guaranteeing everything in writing with our Solution Warranty — unlike our competitors.

STA Delivers:

• Information management architecture
• Storage Networks -- SAN, iSCSI and NAS configuration, implementation and support
• Data de-duplication
• Data replication
• Backup and Recovery
• Storage system health checks
• Database administration • Maintenance contract management • Environmental support agreements (ESA)

Download our Information Management Practice Brief