Help! We're drowning in data

Added by The Editor, about 1 year ago.

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For members of the IT Sanctuary, the race is on to manage rocketing volumes of corporate data -- and it's a challenge that they say will have a major effect on how 2007 IT budgets are allocated.

In fact, almost half (48%) of the respondents to a recent poll on this site said that the primary motivation for the data storage investments they will make during 2007 will be the need to handle greater storage volumes.

By contrast, just 20% said that the primary motivation will be the need to manage more storage with the same amount of staff, while a further 20% cited the need to simplify the management of multiple storage environments.

There was good news for storage administrators on the job-security front, though. Only 12% of respondents said that the primary motivation behind storage investments will be to manage more storage with fewer staff.

Our take: It's no big secret that growing data volumes are a major IT management challenge. Some analysts estimate the data growth rate at some companies to be in excess of 200% per year.

But technology decision-makers need to proceed with caution: simply buying more storage systems to soak up all that extra data is not the answer. In fact, it can lead to greater storage management problems.

Storage spending needs to be strategic and IT departments need to explore how they can get more from their existing storage infrastructure.