What Users Want

If you're in or near Chicago this week, check out the DataComm Enterprise Conference at McCormick Place.

At this event, Byte and Switch editors, along with compatriots at sister publications in CMP's Light Reading universe, will convene with users to discuss the state of enterprise IT in three key areas: storage, security, and wireless technologies.

The choice of subjects for this Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA)-sponsored conference wasn't arbitrary. These are the areas of IT pros' chief concerns these days, and where most of their purchasing will likely be focused in the foreseeable future.

"Vital corporate data passes between, across, and through all of [these areas]," said Steve Saunders, CEO of Light Reading, in a prepared statement. "So, for example, a typical IT project today might comprise working out how to provide a mobile workforce with access to proprietary data stored in a server farm from their PDAs -- and make the whole thing secure."

Recent research backs this up: The latest CIO survey conducted by Merrill Lynch shows networked storage, applications software, and security are the top three targets for increased spending this year. (See Uncertainty Shadows IT Spending.)Gartner and IDC, too, have issued reports of impressive growth in networked storage, reporting upticks in Fibre Channel SAN, NAS, and iSCSI SANs. (See SCSI Celebrates Anniversary, Gartner Highlights Disk Growth, IDC Cites Disk Growth, and External Storage Hits $4.2B.)

But news and predictions of growth tell only half the tale. While users seem willing to spend a bit more than they were a while back, we're not talking a bull market in IT. Most CIOs are, it seems, more judicious than ever about where their money's going. Indeed, experts think a spending rise early this year presaged a spate of tightfistedness.

"The end of 2005 was slow, then it picked up in the spring, but now it has slowed down again," Dan Tanner, a member of the Storage Networking User Group of New England (SNUGNE) and founder of consulting firm ProgresSmart, told Byte and Switch senior editor James Rogers last week. (See iSCSI Strides On.)

So what's the mixed message? Mainly, that users are willing to spend, but only where they see imminent value. For many, that means whatever will make information technology easier for organizations facing data management and mobility issues.

When it comes to storage, for instance, IT pros want to be able to improve storage without breaking the bank on capital or operating expenses. Hence, the growing importance of SATA and SAS disk drives, 4-Gbit/s data rates, gigabit Ethernet, WAN optimization, and virtualization, the subject of our latest poll.Storage networks that are reliable, perform well, and are easily managed are also easier to secure. What's more, if the underlying technology is flexible enough, ITers don't need to redo the network to accommodate wireless users.

In short, what we're discussing in Chicago this week can be used as a filter for gauging what users really want out of their suppliers. Unless it can streamline the combined requirements of security, storage, and wireless, customers may take a pass.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch

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