Majority of Organizations Use Expensive Storage for Infrequently Accessed Data

TwinStrata, Inc., in cloud-integrated storage solutions, announced the results of its Industry Trends: 2014 State of Storage survey.

Analysis reveals that the majority of organizations continue to use expensive primary storage systems to store infrequently accessed data. As a result, respondents engaging in this practice spend more of their annual IT budget on storage than their peers.
 
Conducted in May 2014, the survey collected responses from 254 IT professionals involved in their organization’s storage strategy.

 
Managing inactive data
Management of inactive data (as defined by being unused for six months or more) proved to be an area where the greatest improvements can be made.

Specifically, the survey found:

• The majority of organizations estimate that at least half of all data stored is inactive.

One in five state that at least 75% of their data is inactive.

• 53% of all respondents store inactive data on SANs.
  • 81% of organizations who use SANs and NAS in their environment store inactive data on them.
  • 22% keep inactive data exclusively on SANs or NAS devices.
• Organizations using public cloud storage to store inactive data have a comparatively lower storage budget than those that do not:
  • 62% of organizations that store inactive data solely on SANs or NAS spend more than 10% of their IT budget on storage.
  • In contrast, only 39% of organizations using public cloud storage to store at least part of their inactive data say the same.

Capacity and storage management
The survey also asked general questions regarding the continued maintenance and management of storage infrastructure and found:

• Three out of five organizations replace their storage systems within five years. When asked the top reasons for storage system replacement, growing capacity needs (54%), manufacturer end of life (49%), new technology (38%), and high maintenance costs (30%) were most cited.
• Increased capacity requirements lead to:
  • Two-thirds (68%) of organizations purchasing additional capacity on an annual or bi-annual basis.
  • More than half (52%) deleting old data to free up capacity.
  • 40% replacing entire storage systems to create additional capacity.

Nicos Vekiarides, CEO, TwinStrata, said: “Our survey brings to light an unspoken truth: Companies waste money storing their least important data on their most expensive systems. Today’s IT teams struggle under the weight of traditional storage tactics, leading to wasted budget and storage management inefficiencies. By intelligently incorporating cloud storage into its strategy, an organization can redeploy both budget and staff resources to higher-value initiatives.”

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