LONDON, UK. 10 February 2010
- A survey conducted by data management and storage vendor NetApp
has revealed that limited IT budget (34%) and maintaining quality
of service despite budget cuts (32%) are the biggest challenges IT
professionals will face in 2010.
The research, which surveyed 200 IT
professionals from a range of industries, indicated that expansion
is not on the agenda for UK businesses, but that almost half (48%)
plan to utilise the technology assets they have to increase
efficiency and minimise costs. Carbon footprint reduction was less
of a priority (10%), with IT professionals preferring to focus on
data centre consolidation (37%) instead.
Dave Allen, UK MD at NetApp commented:
"Despite signs of economic recovery, this research shows that IT
departments are still very cautious. Keeping costs low remains at
the very top of the IT agenda. Storage efficiency will be critical
for businesses looking to make the most of the technology they
have, and within this we expect to see widespread adoption of
virtualisation as a means to do more with less as well as some
businesses starting to explore the cloud to outsource specific
applications.
"Going green is still on the list, but has
been overshadowed by a need to cut expenditure and drive down
costs. The good news is that those businesses that make their IT
infrastructure work harder, using storage efficiency technologies
like data de-duplication, virtualisation, thin provisioning and
data cloning for example, will find that reduced energy consumption
and a greener result will follow," he added.
For the majority of organisations storage is
under-utilised, with businesses typically only using between 25 -
40% of their storage assets. This means that 60 - 75% of storage
space is wasted that still needs to be powered, cooled and
maintained, and that businesses may purchase un-needed storage
space. Storage efficient technologies can reduce the amount of
storage space required and increase usage of existing assets.
Technologies like virtualisation and data de-duplication provide
immediate cost savings in the form of reduced power requirements
and can offset the need to purchase more storage or build
additional data centres.
NetApp's Virtualisation Guarantee promises
that customers will increase storage efficiency and reduce storage
requirements by as much as 50% or more compared with traditional
storage. Combined with other storage efficient technologies like
thin provisioning or data deduplication, customers can achieve
asset utilisation as high as 95%.
"This is more than just an efficient way to
manage data; these technologies actually facilitate business
transformation by allowing people to manage the business
differently. The key is to take advantage of the tools available
today to drive change and transformation," said Allen.
To learn more, visit www.netapp.com/uk/solutions/infrastructure/virtualization/guarantee-uk.html
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that accelerate business breakthroughs and achieve outstanding cost
efficiency. Discover our passion for helping companies around the
world go further, faster at www.netapp.com/uk/.
NetApp, the NetApp logo, and Go further,
faster are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in
the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or
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respective holders and should be treated as such.
UK Press Contacts:
Jessica Power or Jemma Mahon
Champion Communications
+44 (0) 207 268 3438
netapp@championcomms.com