Organisations failing to plan for big data
Despite the purported rise of big data, research suggests storage budgets are falling while many organisations have not roadmapped a big data strategy.
Over half of companies have no big data plans even beyond 2013, according to findings by research service TheInfoPro.
TheInfoPro, a line of service from 451 Research, suggests in its report that the storage industry’s growth is slower than it has been over the last two years. The results are based on extensive interviews with storage professionals and primary decision-makers at large and midsize enterprises in North America and Europe.
Alarmingly, despite the continued growth of opportunity in data generation and the emphasis being placed upon the need to take advantage of big data solutions, 56 per cent of respondents claimed that they had no plans stretching beyond the next 12 months. Moreover, storage budgets show signs of decreasing despite the rise in the amount of data organisations are dealing with. This is perhaps an indication of cheaper storage or of an increase in the use of cloud computing solutions.
In summarising the main findings from the company’s research, Marco Coulter, TheInfoPro's research director of storage, said: “After excellent growth in the last two years, storage budgets will grow more slowly in 2012 despite expanding capacity.
“While focused on optimising storage capacity and supporting server virtualisation, some storage architects are concurrently preparing to deliver cloud-like provisioning.”
Coulter stated that the key findings of the study were:
• Storage budget growth slows compared to 2011 as six per cent fewer respondents have increasing budgets in 2012. Midsize enterprises see the most belt-tightening with only 36 per cent planning to increase spending, down from 47 per cent last year.
• Over half (56 per cent) of respondents have no plans for big data even beyond 2013.
• Networked capacity in large enterprises will grow a projected 26 per cent this year.
• Automated tiering displaces backup data reduction/deduplication as the hottest technology in storage on TheInfoPro’s proprietary ‘Technology Heat Index’. Implementation of other optimisation technologies is anticipated to grow, including data reduction, compression, and thin provisioning.
• Server virtualisation is the leading driver of capacity growth. Two thirds (67 per cent) of respondents have 80-100 per cent of production servers connected to Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (FC SAN).
• FC storage networks are predominant with 84 per cent of respondents.
