Downloads

RSS

By Bruce Kornfeld, Vice President of Marketing, Compellent.

Companies may be putting IT spending on hold in an effort to weather the economic downturn, but the business-critical data they rely on to remain competitive continues to grow unabated.

On top of this, the practical ability for most companies to host more equipment to store and manage increased data is being severely impacted by the expectation that many data centers are rapidly running out of space while consuming mass quantities of power.

So, while firms need to grow their storage capacity, they lack the budget, physical space and energy supplies to do this. It's the perfect storage storm. For the budget-challenged IT manager, the need to do more with less has become a sudden and harsh reality.

Of course, companies won't stop investing in storing and managing data. In fact, while Gartner, IDC and other market analyst firms predict overall declines in IT spending for the next 12 months, the one consistent area of IT growth is in storage.

Storage efficiency is, naturally, being cited as one of the biggest drivers for companies determining their storage spend this year and beyond. This point was confirmed in a study by analyst research firm Enterprise Strategy Group. Its survey of 504 global storage professionals found that budget-conscious storage decisions in 2009 will be driven by efficiency. The survey also identified that specific efficiencyfriendly technologies enabling data reduction, intelligent tiered storage and storage reservation were among the top priorities for the next 24 months.