eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
The InfoPro, one of the better storage analyst firms around, came out with a report Jan. 25 that bears a good look.
The New York City-based firm said its new data shows “further effects of the recession on Fortune 1000 and midsize enterprise storage organizations.”
Basically, the report says that budgets are still going to be an issue in 2010, that more storage is going to be needed to rein in all that business data, and that deduplication and other space-saving technologies are going to stay hot.
“Clearly in 2009 (and continuing into 2010), we have seen a focus on tools and products that drive cost savings,” InfoPro Chief Research Officer Anders Lofgren told The Station. “SRM [storage resource management] is certainly one of those technologies that fit the bill, and in that sense, it has seen a bit of a renaissance in the last year.
“Interesting to note that backup and online dedupe took No. 1 and 2 in our ‘heat’ index. These technologies can also be viewed as cost savers,” Lofgren said.
Are SMBs and mid-range enterprises starting to buy into auto-tiering and other advance storage tech, or are they still a few years away from that level of sophistication?
“These technologies tend to roll downhill as they get integrated into other technologies as part of a larger package,” Lofgren said. “Then they become accessible by the MSE (medium-sized enterprises) and smaller SMBs. So to date, some of these technologies are making impact, but not significant as of yet in these-sized operations.”
The InfoPro data was culled from interviews with storage managers in North America and Europe. It revealed that while 45 percent of F1000 respondents plan to increase storage spending in the coming months, 29 percent still expect major budget decreases. In contrast, 41 percent of MSEs plan to increase storage spending this year, while 25 percent expect further reductions.
“Major spending increases won’t resume until new business application installs once again create massive demands on storage needs,” said Rob Stevenson, managing director of storage research. “In the interim, storage shops will focus on productivity improvement and hardware inventory adjustments to prepare for virtualization and cloud support needs.”
To obtain further information on this study, go here.