Top 2 CEO Concerns and Enterprise Storage: Prospect of Recession and Cybersecurity Threats

This article, published on September 7, 2023, was written by Ken Clipperton, lead analyst, DCIG, LLC.

Top 2 CEO Concerns and Enterprise Storage

A recent survey of Fortune 500 CEOs identified the prospect of a recession and cybersecurity threats as their top 2 concerns. Enterprise storage can and should play a role in addressing both of those concerns.

Photo of Ken Clipperton interviewing Eric Herzog about enterprise storage at FMS

Much of this article reflects a conversation I had with Eric Herzog, CMO of Infinidat, at the recent FMS. During that conversation, he pointed me to the results of Fortune Magazine‘s recent CEO survey that found their top concern was recession (26% of respondents), followed by cybersecurity threats (23%). Enterprise storage should play a role in addressing both of those CEO concerns.

Enterprise storage and recession concerns
The right storage can reduce capital and operational expenses, and reduce risk in the face of economic uncertainties.

Opex savings
The increasing performance and capacity density of enterprise storage systems makes it possible to shrink storage’s footprint in the data center and consolidate multiple storage systems. Shrinking the storage footprint saves on data center operating expenses by reducing power, cooling, and floor space costs, whether in private data centers or colocation facilities.

Consolidating workloads into a single storage management environment can also yield substantial savings in management overhead while adding agility to IT operations. Herzog cited one Infinidat customer that was able to replace 27 arrays from multiple vendors with 4 Infinidat arrays.

Capex savings
All the enterprise storage suppliers now offer STaaS options that address Capex concerns and add flexible consumption models that can more closely match costs with revenues. Infinidat won a DCIG TOP 5 award for its STaaS offerings.

Enterprise storage and cybersecurity
NIST Cybersecurity Framework
The concerns of CEOs about cybersecurity are well-founded. Herzog pointed out that enterprise organizations are suffering an average of 1,168 cyber-attacks each week. He suggested that cyber storage is an important part of a comprehensive cyber security strategy, and that failing to incorporate cyber storage into one’s planning is like going on vacation with your front door open and all the lights on.

Happily, enterprise storage providers have introduced cyber resiliency features in their storage systems and are adding more robust protections, especially around capabilities that enable them to rapidly detect, respond, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. In the case of Infinidat, it promotes its cyber storage capabilities under the InfiniSafe name.