Complexity of storing and managing data hinders NZ innovation levels

More than three in four IT decision makers in New Zealand, as well as Australia, claim that the complexity of storing and managing data is impacting their ability to innovate.

At the same time, deploying new storage solutions which are automated and include easy-to-use storage management features are highly prized by 89 per cent of professionals when considering a new storage solution purchase.

That’s according to a survey of IT industry professionals conducted late last year by Nimble Storage which found that storage solutions which reduce management complexity, enable storage performance to be monitored and slash costs in the long-term are attractive to 91 per cent of respondents and deemed to provide extra value.

However, right now, 64 per cent of IT decision makers purchase storage capable of more performance than they can consume because they lack confidence in the vendor’s ability to measure and configure precise real-time demand for performance.

For organisations seeking new storage infrastructure, the survey found that ease of management, service and support, and total cost of ownership are the top three critical criteria considered most important to Australian and New Zealand organisations when selecting a storage vendor solution.

“Enterprises are under pressure to keep pace with increasing user expectations and place a premium on maintaining service level agreements and achieving peak workload performance,” says Peter O’Connor, Vice President Asia Pacific, Nimble Storage.

“This survey suggests that IT data storage solutions and their management are now considered critical mainstream purchases with the potential to impact an organisation’s ability to innovate.

“As a result, solutions which offer a scale-to-fit architecture purpose-built to meet storage performance and capacity in line with workload as well as supporting application environments in an informed, intelligent manner, will be well regarded at this time.”

The Nimble survey found also that the ability to leverage existing in-house staff skills, the size and financial stability of a vendor and certified support for a specific application were important to only one quarter of respondents when selecting new storage infrastructure.

An existing relationship with a vendor, industry specific expertise and pre-qualified solutions/reference architecture was of interest to less than one in five respondents.

Once deployment is underway, 42 per cent of Australian and New Zealand IT professionals deem ease of storage infrastructure implementation as well as overall new product functionality as critically important.

The survey of 100 professionals also found that 82 per cent of respondents believe there is value in buying storage and other data centre technologies and services from one vendor.