Storage mega-growth pitch gets a knockback

With storage vendors desperate to tell you that information growth is staggering, it is surprising that storage solution provider StorageTek has been brave enough to claim this isn’t so.

StorageTek chief technologist Randy Chalfant believes that figures given to the IT industry on storage growth are way off.

“Isn’t everyone getting tired of storage vendors telling you that storage growth is anywhere between 50 to 70 percent?” Chalfant said.

“These figures are ridiculous, the claims that these vendors and analysts make are like a finely-tuned communist plot. A far more realistic figure is 30 percent.”

Chalfant was speaking at a series of briefings in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra on the results of a StorageTek survey of 82 enterprise customers in Australia.

Dispelling the storage growth phenomenon, Chalfant admitted the IT industry has undergone a lot of change including massive data growth, but business is still not keeping pace.

“Hope is not a strategy. Every once in a while something is going to happen and you need to be prepared,” Chalfant said.

However, he said regulatory compliance is driving Australian organizations to look at their data storage requirements and strategies. The survey found 83.5 percent of respondents citing law as an important driver of data storage requirements and strategies.

StorageTek Australia and New Zealand managing director Philip Belcher believes regulatory compliance needs makes organizations realise they don’t have proper strategies for dealing with old data.

“What really keeps people awake at night is the realization that, one day, the government is going to ask them to not only demonstrate that they're keeping data for the regulated timeframe, but that they can quickly locate specific documents related to specific people or transactions," he said.

Disaster recovery also appeared to be a concern according to the results of the survey, with 53.9 percent of respondents seeking to improve their disaster recovery capabilities.

When it comes to controlling storage costs, and top new storage initiatives planned, information lifecycle management (ILM) strategies ranked second only to storage consolidation initiatives, with 76 percent of respondents saying they had implemented, planned to or were investigating ILM strategies.

United Goninan systems manager Stephen Bartley agreed there is a demand issue when it comes to storage.

"Our storage requirements have doubled over the past few years and we put in a SAN in 18 months ago to contend with that; disaster recovery is also on the radar,” Bartley said.

Macquarie Textiles IT manager Paul Cullen said organizations now need to hold on to information for longer periods of time.

“Companies have to be accountable for all their information,” Cullen said.

Though Macquarie Textiles’ storage requirements are growing, Cullen does not yet feel the need to introduce any storage management systems.

“We’re not at that level yet, maybe in about 18 months we will look into it,” Cullen said.

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