A study released this week by security firm
In its 2010 State of the Data Center report, Symantec found that mid-sized organizations (with 2,000 to 9,900 employees) were leading in the use of such technologies as cloud computing, deduplication, replication, storage virtualization and continuous data protection. Further, mid-sized enterprise data centers showed more activity in terms of looking for ways to reduce IT costs or manage increasing complexity in the data center.
“Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organizations, they still face similar data center complexities that are compounded by adopting new initiatives,” Deepak Mohan, SVP of Symantec’s information management group, said in releasing the study. “Standardizing on cross-platform solutions that can manage new technologies and automate processes will drive immediate cost reduction and make their jobs easier in the long run.”
The study, which was conducted by Applied Research for Symantec, was based on surveys in November 2009 of 1,780 data center managers in 26 countries.
Security, backup and recovery, and continuous data protection were found to be the most important initiatives seen for 2009, with 83% of organizations rating security the most pressing need, followed by backup and recovery at 79%, and data protection at 76%.
The study also found that data center managers are concerned about issues arising from too many applications and increased complexity. One-third of data center managers said productivity was being hampered as a result. Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat or extremely understaffed.
Disaster recovery was another area of concern, with one-third of respondents reporting that disaster plans are undocumented or need work. Also, important IT components, such as cloud computing, remote office and virtual servers, are often not included in those plans.
Symantec made several recommendations as a result of the findings, including the following:
Data deduplication technology needs to be deployed closer to the information source to eliminate redundant data and reduce storage and network costs.
Disaster recovery testing is invaluable, but is often avoided because of disruption to the business. Enterprises need to investigate methods that are non-disruptive.
Organizations should deploy a single, unified platform for physical and virtual machine protection to reduce complexity.
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