Latest IT Market Study from TheInfoPro: 2012 Is the Year of Storage Optimization

NEW YORK, July 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research, released its latest storage study, indicating slower budget growth than previous years. Covering the first half of 2012, TheInfoPro Storage Study identifies key initiatives to maximize resources including market factors and major players. This periodic study is based on extensive interviews with storage professionals and primary decision-makers at large and midsize enterprises in North America and Europe.

"After excellent growth in the last two years, storage budgets will grow more slowly in 2012 despite expanding capacity," said Marco Coulter, TheInfoPro's Research Director of Storage. "While focused on optimizing storage capacity and supporting server virtualization, some storage architects are concurrently preparing to deliver cloud-like provisioning."

Mr. Coulter said key trends from the TheInfoPro Storage Study include:

• Storage budget growth slows compared to 2011 as 6% fewer respondents identify as having increasing budgets in 2012. Midsize enterprises (MSE) see the most belt-tightening with only 36% planning to increase spending, down from 47%.
• Networked capacity in large enterprises (LE) will grow a projected 26% this year. Drive choices are changing and Fibre Channel drives lost predominance in 2011 purchases.
• Automated tiering displaces backup data reduction/deduplication as the hottest technology in storage on TheInfoPro's proprietary Technology Heat Index™. Implementation of other optimization technologies is anticipated to grow, including data reduction/deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning.
• Hybrid arrays, using solid-state alongside rotating disks in arrays, approaches majority use in enterprise datacenters, while new players abound for solid-state arrays and in server-installed. Solid state vendors selected as exciting include: Fusion-io, Pure Storage, Nimbus Data, Nimble Storage, Gridiron Sys, Kove.
• Server virtualization is the leading driver of capacity growth remaining a predominantly FC SAN destination. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of respondents have 80-100% of production servers connected to FC SAN.
• Fifty-six percent (56%) of respondents have no plans for big data even beyond 2013.
• FC storage networks are predominant with 84% of respondents. As port counts increase, Cisco is appearing in more data centers.

About TheInfoPro Storage Study

TheInfoPro Storage Study takes an in-depth look at key trends across the industry, and tracks the performance of individual vendors. Now in its tenth year, Wave 16 of TheInfoPro Storage Study covers 1H2012 and was published in June 2012. TheInfoPro's methodology uses extensive interviews with professionals and primary decision-makers at large and midsize enterprises in North America and Europe. Each interview explores key areas including the implementation and spending plans for over 30 technologies, evaluations of vendors observed from business and product perspectives, IT influences transforming the sector, and supporting decision processes. Results are collated into comprehensive research reports providing business intelligence in the form of technological road maps, budget trends, capacity and spending plans, along with vendor performance ratings. A sampling of vendors covered in the Vendor Performance and Technology Roadmap components of the study include: EMC, NetApp, Cisco, Brocade, HDS, IBM, HP, Symantec, Dell, CommVault, QLogic, Emulex, Quantum, Sepaton, FalconStor, Virtual Instruments, and F5.

About TheInfoPro

TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research, is widely regarded as "The Voice of the Customer," providing independent, "real world" intelligence on key IT sectors including Cloud Computing, Information Security, Networking, Servers & Virtualization, and Storage. Using one-on-one interviews conducted within a proprietary network composed of the world's largest buyers and users of IT, TheInfoPro provides data and insights that are used for strategic planning, technology benchmarking, competitive analysis and vendor selection/negotiation. To learn more, https://www.451research.com/about-theinfopro or email [email protected].

About 451 Research

451 Research, a division of The 451 Group, is focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company's analysts provide critical and timely insight into the competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Business value is delivered via daily concise and insightful published research, periodic deeper-dive reports, data tools, market-sizing research, analyst advisory, and conferences and events. Clients of the company - at vendor, investor, service-provider and end-user organizations - rely on 451 Research's insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making. 451 Research is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, Washington D.C., London, Boston, Seattle and Denver.

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SOURCE 451 Research