Symantec 2010 state of the data center study shows mid-sized enterprises emerging as data center vanguards

This release is courtesy, Symantec

BANGALORE, INDIA: Symantec Corp. released the India findings of its 2010 State of the Data Center study.

Now in its third year, the study found that mid-sized enterprises (2,000 to 9,999 employees) are more likely to adopt cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing, de-duplication, replication, storage virtualization, and continuous data protection than small or large enterprises to reduce IT costs and manage increasing complexity.

Further, mid-sized enterprise data centers show more activity, with more IT managers predicting major changes to the data center and new applications in 2010. Mid-sized enterprises also place a higher importance on staffing and training than their small or large enterprise counterparts.

“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,” said Anand Naik, director, systems engineering, Symantec. “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.”

Study highlights:
* Mid-sized enterprises are more aggressive and pioneering than either small or large enterprises. They are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and de-duplication at 10-15 percent higher rates than small or large enterprises.

* Top data center concerns include increased complexity and too many applications. Most enterprises have 10 or more data center initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and fifty percent expect “significant” changes to their data centers in 2010. Half of all the enterprises say applications are growing somewhat/quickly and half of them are finding it difficult and costly to meet service level agreements (SLAs).

One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data causing 52 percent of organizations to consider data reduction technologies such as de-duplication. Controlling storage growth is also one of the major data center objectives for Indian mid- sized enterprises for 2010. Forty-six percent of enterprises consider that controlling storage growth is an absolute requirement while another 32 percent think it is somewhat important for 2010.

* Security, backup and recovery, and continuous data protection are the most important initiatives in 2010, ahead of virtualization. Sixty-eight percent of enterprises rated security somewhat or absolutely important. Sixty-two percent said backup and recovery is somewhat/absolutely important and 60 percent rated continuous data protection as one of their top initiatives.

* Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat/extremely understaffed. Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. Seventy-nine percent of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.

* There continues to be room for improvement in disaster recovery (DR). One-third of disaster recovery plans are undocumented or need work and important IT components, such as cloud computing, remote office and virtual servers are often not included. Compounding the issue, almost one-third of enterprises haven’t re-evaluated their disaster recovery plan in the last 12 months. But at the same time, 65 percent of the companies seemed confident on their organization's DR plan unlike last year.

Recommendations
* Software that supports heterogeneous environments and eliminates islands of information is particularly important for mid-sized enterprises that are aggressively adopting new technologies because they can reduce complexity in the data center.
Organizations should deploy de-duplication closer to the information source to eliminate redundant data and reduce storage and network costs.

* Data center administrators need to manage storage across heterogeneous server and storage environments in a way that enables them to stop buying storage by leveraging new technology adoption such as storage resource management, thin provisioning, de-duplication, storage virtualization and continuous data protection and recovery. Organizations leveraging a holistic approach to storage management can control storage budget growth and often postpone storage purchases.

* Disaster recovery testing is invaluable, but can significantly impact business. Enterprises should seek to improve the success of testing by evaluating and implementing testing methods which are non-disruptive.

* Organizations should deploy a single, unified platform for physical and virtual machine protection to simplify information management.