European businesses struggling to manage mushrooming data requirements, Unisys study showsSurvey indicates 63 percent of businesses fail to manage data storage resources effectively
The findings reveal that just under half of businesses are not confident in their ability to forecast storage requirements and capacity and over 40 per cent have limited or virtually no visibility of their existing data storage needs across the business. This lack of visibility is placing businesses under undue stress, with almost two thirds of those surveyed professing to struggle to meet internal service level agreements with their customers. The survey also confirmed suspicions that European companies are not fully utilising their storage resources and investments, despite the fact that better use of their capabilities would save significant amounts of time and money. Half of respondents estimated data storage utilisation at around 40 per cent and almost 15 per cent of respondents were unable to estimate their utilisation altogether, suggesting widespread under-use of capacity across businesses. According to industry standard best practice, utilisation is around 75 per cent. With only 20 per cent of respondents achieving this level or above, it would appear that poor utilisation and provisioning processes blight many companies, leading to a flawed information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy as well as missed opportunities to extend the life of hardware purchases and reduce spend on technology updates. “Storage is one of the last un-modernised areas of IT,” commented Nicola Wilton, director of information and data management, Unisys. “Strategy can become compromised in the race to buy more storage, as companies struggle to accommodate the explosion in data. The impact on business is intensified by the economic downturn, which triggers spiralling costs, massive inefficiencies and operational risk. One way to encourage business units to proactively manage their data is to impose a payment per consumption model. This can drive down costs and start a much-needed dialogue between the IT department and the Board.” The survey shows that a more consistent, structured approach is needed for data management, from procurement through to utilisation, automation and security. Fortunately there are a number of options open to business. The large majority of respondents (90 per cent) saw the benefits of storage virtualisation, particularly the ability it affords to move data across tiers while avoiding downtime, greater visibility of platforms and increased utilisation by reducing incidences of shrouded pools of storage. “[The] tendency for over-allocation combined with limited ability to effectively forecast data in most organisations leads to a significant gap in the amount of capacity that is allocated versus actually used. Unfortunately, this type of reclamation can be challenging. In most cases reclamation requires application downtime to reallocate storage capacity. To do this successfully requires careful planning on the part of the storage department and buy-in from application teams that are likely to have other priorities. In a down economy though, this effort becomes more worthwhile, as the purchase avoidance savings can be significant,” commented Andrew Reichman, senior analyst, Forrester Research in the July 2008 report, “Five Key Storage Strategies For A Down Economy.” About Unisys Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. We provide high-level services in consulting, systems integration, outsourcing and infrastructure services, combined with powerful enterprise server technology. We specialize in helping organizations use information to create efficient, secure business operations that allow our clients to grow and achieve their business goals. Our consultants and industry experts work with clients to understand their business challenges and create greater visibility into critical linkages throughout their operations. For more information, visit http://www.unisys.com.
Contacts Sara Downey, Brands2Life, +44 207 592 1200 Claire Daplyn, Unisys, +44 1895 865735 |
