At TSL Tech Research, we track technology trends by conducting ongoing research. With the understanding that different sized companies experience IT trends in unique ways, we surveyed IT leaders at enterprises to find out how their data storage requirements were changing.
Understanding how the data needs of enterprises are evolving will help IT service providers that focus on data storage and management know how to best promote their offerings to larger companies.
We surveyed 305 IT professionals at enterprises, asking them how much data they currently store, how they store that data, and how much they anticipate their storage requirements will increase. Our findings present a realistic picture of data growth and storage demands.
When we asked IT professionals at enterprises what percentage they anticipated their data storage needs would increase over the next 12 months:
Key Takeaways:
Many enterprises anticipate experiencing some significant increase in data storage needs. Almost 50% of respondents predicted their data storage needs will increase anywhere from 16% to 50%. Only 5% of enterprises predict their data storage requirements will increase by less than 5%.
Almost a third of enterprises feel their data storage requirements will increase by between 5% and 15%. While these companies are at the lower end of growth, they will still need to accommodate increased demand for storage.
Changing data storage requirements mean that enterprises will be in the market for data center infrastructure and data management services and systems. IT service firms should be cautious about how they promote their data storage solutions and services to enterprises, keeping in mind that only 13% of enterprises expect an increase of 51% or more. To reach a target audience, IT service providers may want to downplay massive data growth in favor of incremental increases and how these affect storage demands.
To get an idea of how increased demand for data storage might affect the infrastructure market, we asked IT professionals at enterprises where they were storing their data. When we asked if organizations were storing data on-premises:
Key Takeaways
Enterprises are moving away from on-premises data storage to adopt a hybrid approach. Of the enterprises surveyed, more than half are taking a hybrid approach to data storage that combines both on-premises and cloud resources. Almost 40% have moved their data to the cloud.
When promoting their data storage solutions and services to enterprises, IT service providers should emphasize their cloud expertise, including their ability to safely migrate data to the cloud and their understanding of data management in hybrid cloud. Less emphasis should be placed on physical storage hardware, unless it is included as part of a hybrid cloud strategy.
When we asked a separate question about which IT areas enterprises were planning on investing in the next 12 months, only:
These results reinforce the findings of the question about on-premises data storage by showing a lack of future investment in on-premises data storage infrastructure.
We put projections about increases in data storage requirements in perspective by asking enterprises how much data they are storing now. When we asked how much data storage large companies are currently using, they responded:
Key Takeaways
Most enterprises are using less than a petabyte of storage. Despite industry predictions of astronomical data growth, large companies are using terabytes of storage to accommodate their needs. Of the enterprises surveyed, they were evenly split between those that were storing under 50 TBs and those storing 50 to 200 TB and 201 to 500 TB at around 20% for each category.
IT service firms should promote their data storage solutions and services by targeting large companies with a range of data storage requirements. Instead of focusing on overwhelming data growth as a pain point, IT service providers should project a more realistic picture of the increases in data being generated and stored by enterprises.
At TSL Tech Research, we dispel myths about data growth and the demands placed on enterprises by surveying IT experts at peer companies. Our exploration of data storage requirements and the approaches enterprises take to storage infrastructure generates insights that can be used to paint an accurate picture of what large companies need from the right IT partner. IT service firms can use this information to reach and engage potential customers for their solutions and services.
Want to uncover your own insights into the needs of enterprise customers? Reach out to TSL Tech Research to learn about how we can help you develop and carry out your own survey.