Cost Saving Key Benefit of Storage Virtualization

PROMISE Technology, Inc. announced the results of its Storage Virtualization Survey conducted over the past three months via face-to-face exchanges at VMworld 2010, Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010 and through email.

The respondents comprised a diverse group of U.S. IT professionals ranging from CIOs to IT administrators. Industries represented are: manufacturing, education, healthcare, federal, state and local governments, media and entertainment, telecommunications, Independent Service Providers (ISPs) and software developers. Among the 200 respondents, the number one driver to adoption of storage virtualization was the ability to control Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA), which was a key concern in generating cost savings.

Among the findings, over 59% of the respondents stated that cost savings was the key benefit of implementing a storage virtualization initiative. It was interesting to note that only 18% ranked improvements in storage utilization as the number one benefit.

The ability to proactively manage storage consolidation initiatives ranked second on the list of key/critical benefits to virtualization implementation at 36% followed closely by disaster recovery at 28%. Additionally, 97% of respondents said they are currently implementing server virtualization; of that same pool, 67% are also currently implementing storage virtualization.

The ability to control and/or reduce licensing savings was a predominant concern with 40% of respondents. Reliability and availability ran neck and neck for second place with 30% saying both were among chief challenges.

Additional findings included:

• 73% of the pool performed a virtualization assessment before taking action compared to the 27% that did not;
• 57% firmly believe they have a well-devised storage virtualization strategy as opposed to 43% that did not;
• Only 28% noted a goal of improving disaster recovery was at the top of their list of storage virtualization benefits; and,
• A huge majority, 72%, have a full reconstruction plan in place to deal with disaster recovery.

"We believe that seeking direct feedback from the IT professional community enables us to accurately direct our development and engineering projects so we can better address and meet the needs of the end-user," said Ray Bahar, vice president sales, marketing and strategic alliances, the Americas, PROMISE Technology, USA. "We have built our company on bringing to market only those solutions that help our customers address their business challenges to maintain their competitive advantage. By allowing their voices to be heard on industry-leading technology challenges, we can continue that legacy."