IDC Releases European Storage Survey

LONDON -- IDC's EMEA storage research team today announced the completion of its seventh annual storage survey, entitled: IDC's Annual European Storage Survey: Understanding User Needs in a Changing Economic Climate (IDC #RS53R). The results of this 38-question survey explore the awareness and adoption of new storage technologies while also assessing the impact external forces are having on European storage budgets.

Deteriorating economic environments are causing many storage managers to rethink how they spend their budgets. It is notable, consequently, that quick-fix solutions topped the list of choices our respondents provided when asked what changes were most likely to occur as a result of current economic conditions. Indeed, survey respondents were most likely to deal with economic downturns by:

Of further interest was the fact that storage was far less likely to experience spending cuts during these difficult economic times than other technologies such as PCs, printers, servers, and networking equipment.

''Changing economic conditions and new technologies such as server and storage virtualization are clearly altering the way European storage managers design and deploy their storage infrastructure,'' said Eric Sheppard, program manager for IDC's EMEA storage research. ''Our survey suggests that the current economic conditions will result in a short-term shift towards tactical spending on storage, while rising adoption of server virtualization is driving new interest in advanced features provided by storage virtualization offerings.''IDC