Storage management stumps CIOs

Survey says nearly two-thirds of businesses failing to manage data storage resources effectively

Nearly two-thirds of CIOs struggling with data storage requirements

The mushrooming volume of corporate data is straining business managers' and CIOs' capacity to cope with storage resources, according to a new survey.

IT services vendor Unisys said the poll of 80 leading European executives showed almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of firms struggling to manage data storage resources effectively.

The respondents were each responsible for over 400TB of data, but half of those surveyed estimated their storage utilisation at around 40 per cent, with 15 per cent unable to estimate storage use altogether.

Forrester Research principal analyst Andrew Reichman said there is tendency for most organisations to over-allocate storage which, when combined with a limited ability to effectively forecast data, "leads to a significant gap in the amount of capacity that is allocated versus actually used."

Reclaiming over-allocated storage "requires application downtime to reallocate storage capacity, and to be successful means careful planning on the part of the storage department and buy-in from application teams that are likely to have other priorities," he said.

But Reichman added that: "In a down economy though, this effort becomes more worthwhile, as the purchase avoidance savings can be significant.”

Industry standard best practice calls for a storage utilisation figure nearer to 70 per cent, suggesting firms are overbuying storage just in case. Upping the storage utilisation to that suggested by best practice would extend hardware life and lower spending on technology updates.