Well, rearview mirrors are always more reliable than crystal balls, and many experts believe that 2005 was, in its own quiet way, the year of the SAN. Regulatory demands, wide acceptance of virtualization and an explosion of data have combined to bring respect, attention and dollars to the field of storage.
That's good news for IT professionals specializing in storage. Storage administrators' national average salary tops US$80,000, while senior administrators average more than $95,000. And some experts say those pay scales have grown 2 percent in the past six months alone -- a trend that shows no sign of leveling off.
If rising salaries and status lead technology workers to deem storage a career specialty, as has happened with security, it will be a new development. "You don't set out in your career to do storage," says David Foote, president of New Canaan, Conn.-based Foote Partners LLC. "It's not a sexy place, and until recently, there was no ROI you could point to."
Storage tasks used to be performed by Unix systems administrators, MVS experts with mainframe backgrounds or Windows wizards focused on the desktop. The evolution of these ad hoc groups into a dedicated storage team again mirrors trends in the security field, experts say. "At some point, you're doing so much work related to security or storage that it makes sense to put that in your title," Foote says.
All-around storage
Until recently, storage chores had subsets across the IT organization, from the desktop to legacy databases and mainframes. But the growing importance of storage has pushed many enterprises toward a holistic approach. That's both good news and bad for those seeking a career path in storage. It's good because most IT workers, from help desk techs to Unix sysadmins and database administrators, are likely to have at least some storage experience. It's bad because the most sought-after storage professionals are the ones who are familiar with all of those areas -- and they are rare.
The desirability of storage workers with broad experience is seen in a higher-than-average salary differential between storage administrators and those who merit the "senior" title. Foote's 2006 salary survey gathered data from 51,000 U.S. IT pros at more than 1,800 employers. The survey, which was released in January, found a mean national salary of $80,500 for storage and SAN administrators, while the mean salary for senior storage or SAN administrators was $95,000.
Storage administrators' bonus pay ranged from 7 percent to 12 percent of their base salaries, while their senior counterparts' bonuses ran from 9 percent to 18 percent of base salary.
The $14,500 base-pay premium for senior storage administrators -- a bigger differential than that found in most IT specialties -- reflects "a big run on experienced senior people who really know what they're doing," Foote says. The survey found that salaries for all storage administrators have risen about 2 percent in the past six months, a similar increase to that of IT as a whole.
Gary Foote (no relation to David) understands the challenges of storage administration and hiring storage administrators. He spent nearly two decades in the field, and for six years he handled about 250TB of Unix storage at an East Coast health care firm that he declines to name (he left the company last year).
With mind-boggling quantities of data, complex security and accessibility needs, and heavy government oversight, health care was one of the first industries to make storage a priority.
"It was tough to find storage people, because it's such a new specialty," says Gary Foote. He adds that many Unix administrators, who had experience managing large numbers of servers, transitioned well into the storage arena. Asked about finding IT workers experienced with SANs, he laughs. "Impossible," says Foote. "We had to send [new hires] to vendor-provided classes and make sure our experienced people gave them a lot of help."
Certification push
Research shows that certifications don't necessarily lead to higher pay in the storage field. That's partly due to the fact that such certifications tend to be for a single vendor only.
The Storage Networking Industry Association is trying to change that. For two years, SNIA has offered, through partners, a "vendor-neutral certification program so IT [workers] can learn storage as a discipline without being tied to a vendor product," says Ralph Luchs, the association's education director.
SNIA offers a certification in storage basics for anybody who wants to pursue the field. The program then splits into two tracks: One focuses on architecting a storage network, and the other certifies IT professionals in management. The cost to take each exam is $200, while the cost to prepare varies widely depending on experience.
According to Luchs, third-party groups ranked the SNIA program as the industry's fastest-growing one in 2005.
With rising demand, fast-changing technologies and a higher profile, storage is emerging as a hot niche for IT professionals.
Sidebar
Resume gold
Experts and hiring managers say the following skills and areas ofexperience make a storage administrator's resume attractive:
-- The ability to design, configure and administer SANs. This is by far the hottest skill in storage today.
-- Thorough knowledge of the old standby, tape storage. "Tape libraries are still the chosen backup medium in most companies," says David Foote of Foote Partners. The need to perform a full backup and restore won't vanish for years.
-- Experience managing either a specific vendor's products or a multivendor environment.
-- Experience working with the vast, multiterabyte data warehouses that are becoming de rigueur in corporate America.
Ulfelder is a freelance writer in Southboro, Mass. Contact him at steve@ulfelder.com.
Sidebar
Big cities, big bucks
The Foote Partners 2006 salary survey found a predictable geographic pattern in storage administrators' salaries: Pay is highest in areas where large enterprises (and their massive storage needs) are concentrated and lowest where big companies are rare. The top five cities and regions are:
1. San Jose
2. San Francisco
3. New York
4. Lower Fairfield County, Conn./Westchester County, N.Y.
5. Los Angeles
The bottom four of the 63 cities named in the research are:
60. San Antonio
61. Nashville
62. Omaha
63. Oklahoma City
Base: More than 50,000 IT workers in the U.S. and Canada
Source: Foote Partners LLC, January 2006