I have a book on my shelf titled The CIO Survival Guide written by Karl Schubert.  In his book Schubert suggests that "success as a CIO is tied to the ability to translate and demonstrate the information technology world of possibilities into meaningful [business] value creation...". Becoming a better corporate citizen, dedicated to bringing home the business value of IT, may need to adjust existing focus. Here are some items to consider:

• Move storage closer to the business. It's more important than ever.
• Are there access-control policies that need to be written?
• Are there storage security policies that need to be ironed out?
• New reports to be created?
• What is your organization’s situation regarding regulations or litigation?
• Do you have tools that help executives make decisions?

Be more strategic than tactical.  Most companies go through rigorous planning activities early in the fourth quarter, among other end-of-year-distraction. Months later, when the planning assumptions need to be validated, personnel seem too busy. The business can often change in unpredictable ways that demand new storage support. Prudent storage managers should dust off budgets and review the business assumptions behind the plan.

Fight fires before they start. Storage teams spend much of their time provisioning new capacity, configuring systems, backing up servers and battling hourly crises. These activities are expensive and stress your staff unnecessarily. Rather than tackling these expensive areas on the fly, smart storage managers will follow the lead of sales departments, marketing departments and other business subsets and start the year with a day-long planning session. It takes staff away for a whole day, yes, but prevention is better than cure.