Data storage and management hindering business

More than three in four IT decision-makers in Australia and New Zealand claim that the complexity of storing and managing data is impacting their ability to innovate.

At the same time, deploying new storage solutions which are automated and include easy-to-use storage management features are highly prized by 89% of professionals when considering a new storage solution purchase.

That’s according to a survey of IT industry professionals conducted late last year by Nimble Storage which found that storage solutions that reduce management complexity, enable storage performance to be monitored and slash costs in the long term are attractive to 91% of respondents and deemed to provide extra value.

However, right now, 64% of IT decision-makers purchase storage capable of more performance than they can consume because they lack confidence in the vendor’s ability to measure and configure precise real-time demand for performance.

For organisations seeking new storage infrastructure, the survey found that ease of management, service and support, and total cost of ownership are the top three critical criteria considered most important to Australian and New Zealand organisations when selecting a storage vendor solution.

Mike Israel, IT manager at Knox Grammar School in Sydney, said, “When we look to deploy storage solutions, we look at a vendor’s whole support strategy from the technology itself to proactive monitoring offered by the vendor’s engineers as well as functionality support provided by automated telephone and email alerts.”

The Nimble survey found also that the ability to leverage existing in-house staff skills, the size and financial stability of a vendor and certified support for a specific application were important to only a quarter of respondents when selecting new storage infrastructure.

An existing relationship with a vendor, industry-specific expertise and prequalified solutions/reference architecture was of interest to less than one in five respondents.

Once deployment is underway, 42% of Australian and New Zealand IT professionals deem ease of storage infrastructure implementation as well as overall new product functionality as critically important.

The survey of 100 professionals also found that 82% of respondents believe there is value in buying storage and other data centre technologies and services from one vendor.

Peter O’Connor, vice president Asia Pacific, Nimble Storage, said, “Enterprises are under pressure to keep pace with increasing user expectations and place a premium on maintaining service level agreements and achieving peak workload performance.

“This survey suggests that IT data storage solutions and their management are now considered critical mainstream purchases with the potential to impact an organisation’s ability to innovate.

“As a result, solutions which offer a scale-to-fit architecture purpose built to meet storage performance and capacity in line with workload as well as supporting application environments in an informed, intelligent manner will be well regarded at this time.”

Image courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives under CC