Research Briefs

SMB organizations are just as reliant as their enterprise and midmarket counterparts on data to support day-to-day operations, though they typically lack the resources and/or IT expertise to ensure its availability and preservation. In spite of this, recent ESG research reveals that many SMBs understand the importance of their IT assets and are at least attempting to back up their data, whether proactively or reactively.  However, given the fact that even larger organizations haven’t “solved” data protection, there is an opportunity in the SMB space for both education and services to not only supplement current backup strategies, but–more importantly–to foster new ones.

An ESG survey of 395 IT professionals at midmarket and enterprise organizations revealed the top security challenges in today’s data centers. This brief identifies the top challenges to running a secure data center, such as keeping up with the constant stream of new threat intelligence, and monitoring network activity in spite of unfortunate blind spots. It examines the underlying causes of these challenges, and concludes with advice for security vendors to help customers cope. 

ESG’s survey of over 400 IT professionals showed that, while the total cost of data storage is very important to IT professionals, certain types of organizations care more about reducing storage-related hardware and software costs, while others are more interested in reducing IT staff-related costs of storage. This brief examines the storage purchasing processes of decision makers at midmarket and enterprise organizations, from the reasons behind their decision to acquire or upgrade storage, to the criteria they apply and the features they demand of their storage systems. It reveals just how much features such as 10GbE, solid-state disks, and thin provisioning really matter, and considers whether or not storage vendors should invest in projects such as pre-qualifying solutions or building reference architectures.

A hybrid cloud implementation can be an attractive deployment model for a corporate online file sharing (OFS) solution. Hybrid cloud benefits may include greater security and control for the customer organization. An ESG survey of nearly 500 IT professionals working at organizations of all sizes, with varying levels of interest (or disinterest) in OFS, revealed how much of an  impact hybrid cloud offerings will have on the OFS market.

Nearly half of midmarket and enterprise organizations plan to increase their information security spending in 2013, and only a small number of these organizations expect decreased information security budgets this year. In addition to investigating organizations’ plans to spend in areas such as network security, advanced malware detection and prevention, and mobile device security, ESG also considered the impact of the ongoing security skills shortage on organizations’ security initiatives.

In spite of the economic uncertainty that loomed as many 2013 budgets were planned, 92% of midmarket and enterprise organizations expect to increase or maintain their spending on storage infrastructure this year. This is especially true among larger organizations, as well as those that view data storage technology as more strategic to IT and business operations. The healthy levels of spending for storage technology are attributable to the fact that organizations continue to identify managing data growth as a top IT priority. Which other IT priorities and initiatives will have the greatest impact on how 2013 storage budgets are divvied up and allocated?

The networking space will be getting a lot of attention in 2013 as new technologies and architectures are being announced and brought to the market. However, with organizations planning under the shadow of a potential fiscal cliff, what were the impacts to network spending and where will organizations actually be investing in 2013?  

The emergence of cloud storage platforms has changed the way organizations manage their in-house storage. Findings from ESG’s recent storage survey, combined with cloud storage statistics from ESG’s spending survey, provide insights into the future of traditional and cloud-based storage strategies and budgets. This brief includes quantitative data about the impact organizations expect the cloud to have on their storage strategies, the extent to which organizations will use cloud storage to source storage capacity, and the amount of data that will be offloaded to the cloud in the coming years.