In the previous article I discussed the subject of Billing and Chargeback. This entry discusses some of the issues raised in that post as additional considerations.

In any system, resources are finite. There is always a limitation to what is available. However there’s also a truism that states if resources are free then they will be consumed at an infinite rate. So it is with storage. Someone has to pay for the storage resources that are placed on the floor. If customers are not charged in some way for their consumption of storage, then they will continue to consume resources ad infinitum. The solution is to implement chargeback or, to be more precise, billing.

As discussed previously, the Service Catalogue is a key component of delivering storage as a service. In this post, I’ll explore some thoughts on developing a Service Catalogue and how its abstraction from technology allows the delivery of a more efficient operation.

IT has matured and we’ve mostly moved on to a service-orientated method for delivering computing (and in this case storage) resources. To effectively deliver storage resources within an organisation, it is essential to move to a service-based model where storage is provided as a service offering that is planned and managed, rather than simply on-demand.

I’m about to start a new series of posts discussing the whole process of Storage Management. I’m calling it the Four Pillars of Storage Management as there are 4 main components: Service, Operational, Commercial, and Technology