Storage spending among Fortune 1000 customers reports modest growth with 35% of organisations expecting to further appropriations in 2011, while only 13% of midsize enterprises (MSEs) face storage budgets cuts in 2011, according to a study by a research and advisory company for the IT industry, TheInfoPro.
TheInfoPro said that 39% of Fortune 1000 customers anticipate stable storage spending, while in MSEs only 13% face storage budgets cuts in 2011, compared to 27% in 2010, and 26% of Fortune 1000 customers are facing budget cuts, a decrease of 4% percent compared to this year.
Big brands in technology sector like IBM and Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are vulnerable, despite their strong brand advantages, with Oracle rated as the second most vulnerable vendor for a second consecutive round of the study, the report revealed.
TheInfoPro chief technology officer Ivan Ruzic said the HP and Dell bidding war over 3PAR is dominating the media’s attention right now, and rightfully so.
"But the acquisition merely underscores what is shaping out to be a strong year for the industry as a whole as well as for innovative storage vendors like EMC, NetApp and others who have retained customer loyalty through their ability to adapt to the changing landscape and still offer an exciting product," Ruzic said.
The report revealed that deduplication for backup data reduction remains dominant, as it is commonly cited top initiative among storage professionals, while in vendors, EMC has become the most cited in use for the technology by a wide margin listed as the vendor of choice.
In addition, online data reduction/deduplication, has recorded a 50% reduction in terms of long-term planning, with some enterprises dropping it altogether, the report said.
TheInfoPro storage practice managing director Marco Coulter said that it is no surprise that measurable offerings like deduplication and thin provisioning are the hottest initiatives. From the improved utilisation and overall capacity reductions we see in our research, they are clearly delivering on the promise.
Further, the report revealed that solid-state disk (SSD) interest remains high, especially among the Fortune 1000, while deployments will wait until the next refresh.
