The pressure of storage
The pressure of storage
A survey recently carried out by vendor StorageTek shows that administrators in Australia are under pressure from growing storage demands, data growth, capacity planning, reduced spending and the deletion of data.
"It is interesting that almost a quarter of organisations are aggressively deleting data."
During February StorageTek in Australia surveyed personnel responsible for storage in large and medium sized businesses; 81 businesses replied and most reported that they were having difficulty with their storage administration.
"Almost all organisations are experiencing data storage growth in 2003,with the vast majority having to accommodate this within a static orshrinking storage budget," said Philip Belcher, the managing director forStorageTek Australia and New Zealand. "Organisations must discover moreeffective ways to manage their burgeoning data assets so they can storemore for less."
Amongst the storage management areas causing problems were performance management, change control, security management, problem management, vendor management and asset configuration. Disciplines causing the most problems were storage administration, 61.7 per cent reported problems and 58.3 per cent have problems with capacity planning.
The survey revealed that storage requirements continue to grow and 91.9 per cent said their storage requirements were growing at around 25 per cent a year and 52.9 per cent saying their storage demands were growing by 50 per cent a year and a quarter felt that their storage requirements were doubling year on year.
Although requirements are growing, budgets are decreasing with 70.8 per cent of respondents reporting that their budgets were either static or shrinking. Over half said the storage budget was the same as last year's, despite the increase in demand. Just 29.2 per cent said their budget had grown.
"Organisations are demanding a more immediate return on funds invested, leaving little room for visionary concepts that are slower to return value," said Mr Belcher.
Amongst the problems this scenario is creating is that 32.5 per cent of those surveyed said they were reducing their storage costs by deleting old data.
"It is interesting that almost a quarter of organisations are aggressively deleting data. While this is a sign of the difficult economic times, it can be a risky approach. Important business information may be disappearing in the rush to clear storage space," Mr Belcher said.
Most businesses see storage consolidation as the answer, 69.2 per cent said they saw consolidation as the way to control storage costs.
Those organisations that are spending money are expecting a return on investment (ROI) within two years or even less, 19.8 per cent said their company expect an ROI within a year. Of those that are spending, 35.8 per cent said they were buying storage systems at the lowest price. Others looking to save money were education their end users to conserver storage space, while 32.5 per cent were keeping older equipment in service longer.
Vendors were found to be the main source of storage technology knowledge for most administrators, 62.5 per cent claiming to gain their knowledge from vendors. A further half found conferences the main source of knowledge. Workplace colleagues and training classes were found to be important and 38.3 per cent said they read the manuals.
"Contrary to concerns of bias, the survey results suggest that organisations recognise the vendors' knowledge leadership, based on their global reach, proven methodologies and broad range of experience working with many organisations.
"However, this is also a danger signal. When the industry relies exclusively on vendors for training, the resulting knowledge tends to be reactive and product or technology based. The results of this survey as a whole clearly indicate that a strategic approach to storage management and design is needed. Storage managers need to learn principals rather than technology, with access to cross-platform skills and strategic advice," Mr Belcher said.
The survey also looked at the skills that Australian businesses felt they needed in the storage sector. Over half felt they needed greater storage resource management skills and 45 per cent felt they needed backup management and policy setting skills and 44.2 per cent felt they needed basic storage area network (SAN) skills. Product knowledge, data architecture and business continuity were also seen as needing more skills.
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