New ESG Research Shows Medium-Size Businesses Prioritize Virtualization, Information Management, and Security in 2009

Business Wire, August 19, 2008

Technology priorities reflect flat IT budgets and emphasize efficiency, cost reduction, and improved alignment with business requirements

MILFORD, Mass. -- Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a market-leading information technology research, analysis, and consulting firm, today announced that its recent Medium-Size Business Server and Storage Priorities survey indicates that North American IT managers serving medium-size businesses can expect little or no real dollar growth in their 2009 and 2010 budgets, even as data center information management requirements escalate rapidly. IT managers serving organizations with between 100 and 999 employees are being asked to contribute to organization-wide cost reduction efforts. As a result, IT investments to improve server and storage performance and utilization--as well as power, cooling, and space efficiency (PCSE)--are top priorities.

Among the report's key findings:

* Sixteen percent of survey participants expect their IT budgets to decrease in 2009 compared to 2008, 29% believe budgets will stay flat, and 29% expect budgets will increase, but at a rate of 4% or less. Given the current rate of inflation in the United States, this effectively means that 74% of medium-size organizations will have fewer real dollars to work with during 2009.

* Under-utilized servers, a lack of physical space, and the need to improve server availability/reliability are driving many medium-size business IT decision makers to make major commitments to initiatives such as server virtualization, multi-core servers, blades, and server consolidation programs. Forty-two percent of organizations surveyed have already deployed x86 server virtualization, and an additional 36% plan to do so.

* Driven by double-digit data growth, medium-size businesses are experiencing a number of ongoing storage challenges, including the need to improve data backup and recovery processes (38%), increasing storage system costs (33%), general difficulty keeping up with data growth (31%), and a shortage of physical data center space (30%).

"Business requirements, budget pressures, and rapid growth in corporate data volumes are forcing medium-size organizations to take a serious look at sophisticated IT infrastructure solutions," explains ESG analyst Mary Johnston Turner. "Previous ESG research conducted in 2004 found that more than one-third (39%) of medium size organizations reported corporate storage requirements of 1 terabyte (TB) of data or less, with just 13% reporting more than 10 TB of data. Today, those figures have reversed: just 9% say they have 1 TB of data or less, while 42% now report having 10 TB or more. This situation is driving strong demand for a number of information management technologies, including networked storage, digital archiving, and data reduction, not to mention increased information security."

Ms. Turner goes on to state that many medium-size organizations are concerned they don't have adequate internal skills to support the design and implementation of these new technologies. "Survey participants indicate service and support capabilities provided by vendors and/or their channel partners are now their number one IT infrastructure selection criteria, playing a greater role in the purchasing process than price or ongoing operating costs."

Complete findings are available in ESG's new report: 2008 Medium-Size Business Server & Storage Priorities. The 40-page report includes over 40 charts and tables.

About Enterprise Strategy Group

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is widely recognized as the leading authority on Data Center issues, technologies, and trends. As an integrated, full-service firm, ESG is world-renowned for research, guidance and analysis that provides forward-looking, actionable market intelligence and consulting services geared to deliver measurable results. ESG was named one of world's top 10 analyst firms of the year in 2008 by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations. ESG's integrated intelligence is relied upon worldwide by IT professionals, technology vendors, institutional investors, and the channel and media communities.

For more information visit: www.enterprisestrategygroup.com.