78% of U.S. and Canadian Organizations Don’t Expect Storage and Networking Teams to Combine

TheInfoPro, an independent research and advisory company for the IT industry, released its first Organizational Dynamics study for storage organizations. It reveals trends in key structural issues facing IT organizations today and provides extensive lists of financial metrics. The study gives insight into the impact that technology and financial considerations will have on the evolution of storage organizations and shows ranges and optimal cost levels of support staffing.

Research Revealed:

• More than half of study respondents (54%) see a significant or major impact on addressing storage needs because of server virtualization.
• Seventy-eight percent (78%) of respondents said they do not expect storage and networking teams to combine.
• Most respondents (77%) said they do not have a separate virtualization group.
• Sixty percent (60%) of respondents said their organization sees major operational benefit in having a separate data management group.

Enterprises can benefit from the Organizational Dynamics storage study by gaining the ability to benchmark their own IT organizations with comparisons to other companies, by setting a baseline of current productivity and efficiency from a financial perspective and by being able to help in the ROI calculations of new technology implementations.

Financial, Telecom, High Technology
and the Effects of Virtualization
Demonstrating a breakdown by industry, the financial industry showed higher costs per managed storage unit, while telecom and technology companies had lower costs. The implementation of hardware efficiency tools, such as SRM and file virtualization, may be mitigating capital expenditures spending, but did not show direct impact on operational expenditures.

“Looking toward the future, we found that important shifts in the organizational structure will occur in the next three to five years, particularly in the larger storage groups,” said Myron Kerstetter, TheInfoPro’s Managing Director of Organizational Studies. “But despite the hype, many organizations did not expect the creation of formal virtualization teams or the merging of storage and networking groups.”

Providing Insight Into the Business Aspects of IT
The Organizational Dynamics study was conducted using live one-on-one, 60-minute interviews with senior storage professionals from Fortune 1000 companies in the United States and Canada. The interviews were conducted in July 2009.

While the technical issues facing storage organizations today are well known, the issues of operational and organizational efficiencies are not thoroughly understood. TheInfoPro’s Organizational Dynamics study mirrors this sentiment: The metrics collected from F1000 firms reflect major differences of costs and efficiencies across various storage shops, giving strong indications that this is an area ripe for improvement and savings for many organizations.

The study also breaks down these areas for growth examining both large storage organizations and smaller ones measuring metrics in managed storage per technical staff and of staff cost per managed storage unit.

About TheInfoPro’s Organizational Dynamics Study
TheInfoPro’s Organizational Dynamics studies examine the technical support staffs associated with storage, servers, security and networking. The Organizational Dynamics storage study was conducted during June and July 2009. TIP’s Organizational Dynamics study focuses on key structural issues facing IT organizations today. It provides insight into the evolvement of the IT organization and the impact technology and financial considerations will have in the future. One-on-one live interviews were conducted with all participants. All participants were based in the United States or Canada. More than seven industry segments were represented in the study. The number of raw terabytes under management by respondents ranged from 150TB to 15,000TB.