Carl Gough, business manager F5 Data Solutions said now is the time for storage consultants or SI's to enter the market under the 'umbrella' of 'storage economics' to penetrate business and government to talk about reclaiming storage space and revenues.

He said in Australia, data volumes are growing at 50 to 60 percent per annum but 'the sad reality is that storage budgets do no match'.

Questions like 'Are you using all the storage you have' or 'how much time and resources are wasted storing data that is not needed' or 'not managing data that is crucial?' need to be had at the C level said Gough.

He said F5 Data Solutions offer a technology agnostic analysis of a clients overall storage requirements and create a long term plan to better address them.

"If the channel is smart, they will help their customers to sweat their existing assets, will help keep overall costs of data centre power, disk procurement, floor\rack  space, depreciation down, not to mention deferring costs of new storage and of course all of the man hours associated with it," said Gough.

"The conversation is not just about needing more storage. During boom times organisations got away with "buying more" because budgets were growing but now we need to change that thinking."

Gough added that it's a 'big picture' discussion better had at the boardroom rather than on the IT floor.

If it's held at the right level, CIO, CFO, he said, it's quick and very well received because it's done in business terms.

"As with all things, long range strategic discussions fall on deaf ears of IT managers or storage architects who are up to their neck in running the day to day stuff," he said.

"80 percent of budgets used to keep the lights on, 20 percent for innovation. There is something wrong with that picture.

"It comes down to the relationships you have with customers, and the bigger opportunity is in the channel where the resellers, SI etc play.

"They are the people that want to hear about ways to create and achieve a 'sustainable reduction in the total cost of ownership of storage' and how to reduce the overall operating budgets.

"In our industry however it's endemic that we get caught up in the technology and forget people are buying it for business reasons, not technology reasons," he added.

Gough added that he was certain benefits exist for all parties, especially resellers that help their customers instead of 'just box dropping'.

F5 Networks has joined forces with its partners Data Domain and Tripoint to host a series of seminars on how to reduce the long-term costs of storing business data.

Two breakfast seminars will be held in Sydney at The Westin Hotel on 23^rd July and Melbourne at The Westin on 24^th July.

Breakfast seminar agenda

8:00 - 8:30: Breakfast and Registration
8:30 - 9:00: How to Reduce Storage Costs & Complexities within your organisation - Scott Howser, F5 Networks
9:00 - 9:20: Data Domain
9:20 - 9:40: Tripoint
9:40 - 10:00: Q&A Close