Cost savings is the key benefit of implementing a storage virtualization initiative, said 59 percent of respondents to Promise Technology's recent Storage Virtualization Survey. Only 18 percent ranked improvements in storage utilization as the No. 1 benefit.
The survey was conducted over the past three months via face-to-face exchanges at VMworld 2010 and Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010 and through e-mail.
The ability to proactively manage storage consolidation initiatives ranked second on the list of key or critical benefits to virtualization implementation at 36 percent, followed closely by disaster recovery at 28 percent. Additionally, 97 percent of respondents said they are currently implementing server virtualization. Of that same pool, 67 percent are also currently implementing storage virtualization.
The respondents comprised a group of U.S. IT professionals ranging from CIOs to IT administrators. Industries represented are manufacturing, education, health care, federal, state and local governments, media and entertainment, telecommunications, ISPs and software developers. Among the 200 respondents, the No. 1 driver to adoption of storage virtualization was the ability to control total cost of acquisition (TCA), which was a key concern in generating cost savings.
The ability to control and/or reduce licensing savings was a predominant concern with 40 percent of respondents, according to survey results. Reliability and availability ran neck and neck for second place, with 30 percent saying both were among chief challenges. The study also found that 73 percent of the pool performed a virtualization assessment before taking action compared with the 27 percent that did not.
In addition, the survey found 57 percent firmly believe they have a well-devised storage virtualization strategy as opposed to 43 percent that do not. Only 28 percent said a goal of improving disaster recovery was at the top of their list of storage virtualization benefits, while a large majority, 72 percent, said they have a full reconstruction plan in place to deal with disaster recovery.
"We believe that seeking direct feedback from the IT professional community enables us to accurately direct our development and engineering projects so we can better address and meet the needs of the end user," said Ray Bahar, vice president of sales, marketing and strategic alliances for the Americas at Promise Technology, a supplier of RAID storage solutions catering to small to midsize businesses. "We have built our company on bringing to market only those solutions that help our customers address their business challenges to maintain their competitive advantage. By allowing their voices to be heard on industry-leading technology challenges, we can continue that legacy."
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