Storage Consolidation Moving Up The IT Agenda According To DELL™ Research
Bracknell, UK, 12 October 2005 - Storage consolidation is moving up the IT agenda, according to the latest research from Dell - 59% of IT managers have consolidated their storage systems or are planning to consolidate them in the near future. Just over a half are consolidating to SANs (51%), or NAS (23%), followed by a combination of the two (16%).
The biggest obstacle to storage consolidation is budget, with 29% of respondents claiming it is holding them back. Another key reason given was the difficulty in measuring the value to the business, which was cited by 19% of respondents. This was backed up by the fact that a worrying 44% of those surveyed couldn't estimate by how much storage consolidation can cut operating costs.
"Storage consolidation no longer has to be expensive," says Hugh Jenkins, Enterprise Marketing Manager, Dell UK. "The Dell | EMC AX100 SAN solution, for example, is a low-cost SAN where every component is user-friendly and powerful. It's ideal for any company that is missing out on the benefits of storage consolidation because of price or complexity."
Despite this, most IT managers recognise the benefits of storage consolidation. 44% think it would give them improved manageability, and although there are budget concerns, 41% think it would lower total cost of ownership. Other benefits given were:
- Improved utilisation and scalability (36%)
- Better management/helps to protect corporate data (29%)
- Makes adding storage capacity easier (27%)
- Maximises uptime and reduces unplanned downtime (26%)
"There are a number of potential ROI advantages from storage consolidation," adds Jenkins. "For example, much better utilisation rates of storage assets, guaranteeing greater security and availability to business critical data and improved overall manageability, giving more control over the archiving and retrieval of data helping the business respond quickly to changing business needs, often in the face of legislative pressures."
About the survey
The Dell survey was carried out at a series of Dell Customer Technology and Solutions events in the UK, held in London, Glasgow and Northampton in June this year. Survey results are based on 160 respondents.
