| European IT directors believe that data storage is critical to enterprise business continuity: survey
However, surprisingly, only 27 percent of survey respondents believe that compliance and governance are forcing the data storage issue. More than half (52 percent) of respondents surveyed don't know, or disagree, that compliance is forcing the increased uptake of data storage networking. The study, commissioned by network specialist Ciena, and executed by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, polled IT directors from companies across the UK, France, Germany and Spain. Respondents were selected from a cross section of companies from the financial, manufacturing, retail and other commercial sectors, and organisations with more than 1,000 employees. Gary Smith, CEO and president of Ciena, said: "Legislation is a key factor propelling the deployment of data storage replication solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery applications in the US. However, it is not surprising that IT directors in Europe differ in opinion on the importance of this issue, because regulatory compliance is not yet mandatory for all industries in European regions." "Although compliance is a headache for many companies, especially those that do not understand the full impact of regulations and implications of non-compliance, US regulations do have a knock on effect in Europe," continued Smith. "Therefore, in protecting an organisation's integrity and operations, it becomes the responsibility of IT directors, as well as executive management, to be educated about data retention, protection requirements and implementation strategies." On a broader scope, only 10 percent of survey respondents viewed storage as a key issue facing enterprise communications technologies, although, as stated above, 76 percent perceived data storage as critical to business continuity. Moreover, 48 percent of these respondents chose reliability as the key factor in evaluating communications technologies, preferring this to cost (28 percent) and usability (13 percent). Ciena says that these figures illustrate a critical disconnect between overall enterprise IT infrastructure and storage networking solutions over the MAN/WAN environment, which is a necessity for data availability and business continuity. When implementing efficient data storage networking, survey respondents indicated that a balance of price and performance is the largest influencing factor (41 percent) when making purchasing decisions, a point that reinforces the universal desire for first-class technology at the lowest possible cost. Additionally, a large contingent of respondents (40 percent) indicated they would choose to build a private network for connecting their data centres from a mix of services and equipment purchases versus leasing a wholly managed (13 percent) or unmanaged service (2 percent) from a carrier. This reflects the need for a tailored yet cost-effective solution that fits the enterprise's specific business needs, and also illustrates a level of uncertainty in allowing carriers to manage the storage of critical data. Interestingly, though, when questioned about the principle benefits of specific storage extension technologies - storage-over-SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) and storage-over-WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing) - 78 percent of respondents were not sufficiently familiar with either technology to provide a response. Traditionally, IT managers never needed to know about WAN networking; now, a need exists for enterprise IT departments to be familiar with MAN/WAN networking technologies.
•Date:
20h January 2005 • Region: UK/W.Europe •Type:
Article •Topic:
IT continuity |
