Research Reports

For this research project on data storage trends in Western Europe, ESG surveyed 307 IT and storage professionals who are responsible for evaluating, purchasing, or managing data storage at midmarket (i.e. 100 to 999 employees) and enterprise (i.e. 1,000 or more employees) organizations in the UK, France, and Germany. The survey questions were the same questions that were posed in a separate ESG survey of IT and storage professionals in North America (United States and Canada), as described in ESG’s research report on the U.S. storage market. The results of the two research projects provide valuable information about the similarities and differences in storage technology purchasing, deployment, and management in Western Europe compared to North America. In many cases, the findings from the two surveys were quite similar. However, there were key differences in some areas, and these differences will be highlighted throughout this report.

ESG conducted an in-depth survey of 412 IT and business professionals concerning their organizations’ current data storage environments including current storage resources, challenges, purchase criteria, as well as forward-looking data storage plans. Survey participants represented small (99 or less employees) and small midmarket (100 to 250 employees) organizations in North America (United States and Canada).

In order to assess IT spending priorities over the next 12-18 months, ESG recently surveyed 540 IT professionals representing midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations in North America and Western Europe. All respondents were personally responsible for or familiar with their organizations’ 2012 IT spending as well as their 2013 IT budget and spending plans at either an entire-organization level or at a business-unit/division/branch level. A subset of ESG’s questions in this survey focused on respondents’ usage of and plans for public cloud computing services.

In order to better gauge current usage of, interest in, and familiarity with desktop virtualization technology, ESG surveyed North American IT decision-makers responsible for overseeing their organizations’ desktop and mobile computing strategies.

In order to assess IT spending priorities over the next 12-18 months, ESG recently surveyed 540 IT professionals representing midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations in North America and Western Europe. All respondents were personally responsible for or familiar with their organizations’ 2012 IT spending as well as their 2013 IT budget and spending plans at either an entire organization level or at a business unit/division/branch level.

In 2011, ESG conducted a survey focused on e-discovery activities with corporate counsel respondents in organizations with 500 or more employees. The data from this study revealed significant interest in defensible deletion. When respondents were asked about the most important priorities facing their internal e-discovery process, more than two-thirds (69%) of respondents identified working more closely with IT and records management to defensibly expire data more consistently.

The legal department, traditionally more risk-averse and opposed to deletion, had realized the value of expiring data given the risk and costs it posed in litigation. For one, the additional expense of data retention stemming from irrelevant and redundant data contributes to the volume of legal and regulatory productions. But perhaps even more significantly for serial litigants, the legal exposure from retaining data past its expiration period presents a liability for involvement in potential legal or regulatory requests which might otherwise be avoided.

In order to assess the intersection of big data and security analytics in 2012 and beyond, ESG surveyed 257 IT and information security professionals working at enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations in North America. All respondents were directly involved in the planning, implementation, and/or operations of their organization’s information security policies, processes, or technical safeguards. They were all also familiar with their organization’s collection and/or analysis of security data in support of their organization’s risk management, security analysis, and incident detection/response strategies.

Organizations are beginning to embrace online file sharing and collaboration (OFS) services, signing up for corporate accounts with service providers at a significant pace—albeit in a limited fashion at this time. This relatively new technology, first embraced by individual employees, is becoming an increasingly important tool in the IT team’s toolkit, helping organizations reduce storage and administration costs and improving employee collaboration, workspace flexibility, and productivity. Due to concerns about security of the available offerings, IT is approaching adoption cautiously, initially rolling out solutions for workgroups or departments that have a real need for file sharing and collaboration. But over the next few years, OFS usage will expand from departmental projects to company-wide adoption and inter-company file sharing and collaboration.

ESG’s research has revealed the reasons organizations are (or are not) adopting OFS, the rate and sweet spots of corporate OFS adoption, the most important criteria and features organizations consider when choosing an OFS service, and the challenges organizations are grappling with as they deploy OFS today.