2004 Purchasing Intentions Survey

Mark Schlack

Editorial Director, Storage Media Group

TechTarget

Methodology

Email survey conducted in August, 2004

Respondents had specific purchasing authority

Average company size: $1.79 billion annual

revenue

Results based on 606 respondents

Some data compared to similar surveys in

August and March of 2002-2004

Average storage budget is $2.4 million

$5-10 mil, 6

$1-5 mil, 26>$10 mil,

5

Don't know, 9

<$1 million, 55

Estimate your company’s 2004 storage budget

Broad cross-section of industries

13

1111

11

7

6

41

Govt

Finance/ Banking

Health/ Medical

Mfg/ Process

Education

Retail/ Dist

Other

The big trends

Budgets are up, but biggest spenders have backed off since March

Disk spending is up and remains firm, with midrange purchases dominating

Tools remain a problem

The move to disk backup has begun, but some caution has set in on technology choices

Tape taking on new importance as archiving becomes more important

Networks slowly becoming more structured

iSCSI getting cautious adoption

Initial optimism about budgets tempered at the high end

26

15

11

18

936

13

27

19

12

18

8249

31

22

10

22

2347

22

20

11

22

914

10

2003 8/03 projection March-04 August-04

Increase>10% Increase 5-10% Increase<5% No change

Don't know Decrease<5% Decrease 5-10% Decrease>10%

53%52% 58% 63%

How does your company’s 2003 storage budget compare to 2002?How does your company’s 2004 storage budget compare to 2003?

Disk subsystems

Disk spending still strong, software not growing

15

33

18

156

13

14

41

9

16

812

15

42

12

146

12

2002 Mar-04 4-Aug

Staff Disk Hardware Storage Network HW

All Hardware Storage SW Professional services

Media

Indicate the percentage of your 2004 storage budget that was allocated

to the following items

Users buying more disk capacity

10

12

14

16

18

20

Mar-03 Sep-03 Mar-04 Sep-04

TB TBs

How much storage do you expect your company to purchase this

year?

Average of all users

Most still buying under 10TB, but larger purchases creeping up

How much storage do you expect to purchase in 2003?

37

42

14

4

76

19

42

73

20

4

3

65

24

7

3

2002 Mar-03 Oct-03 Aug-04

1-10TB 11-50TB 51-100TB 100TB

How much storage do you expect your company to buy?

Midrange purchases dominating disk buys

High-end, 24

Midrange, 38

Low-end, 33

Other, 5

What percentage of your 2004 disk sybsystem purchases will be for each of the

following categories?

Users seeking alternatives to NAS for files

39

333639

36

27

20 21

44

28

36

2932

25

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Aug-03 Nov-03 Feb-04 May-04 Aug-04

%

Consolidated NAS Multiple NAS DAS Virtualized pools NAS/ SAN gateways

March-04

Which best describes your plans for file storage?

Vendor choices stabilizing

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

2002 Mar-03 Aug-03 Mar-04 Aug-04 2005

%

EMC

HP

IBM

HDS

Dell

NetApp

Sun

STK

Who will be your primary vendor for disk subsystems?

Storage management software

Buyers remain unenthused by management software

0102030

405060

2002 Mar-03 Oct-03 Mar-04 Aug-04

%

Increase Stay the same Decrease None

2002

Which best describes your purchase plans for storage management software?

Users making do with bundled software from hardware vendors

10097

9491

7976

32

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

I ndex

Use bundled sw

Don't need

Cost too much

Lack budget

Doesn't meet needs

Vaporware

Other

Rank your reasons for not increasing your purchases of storage management

software

Storage managers want basic tools

100

10094 94

9096

87 87

7066

52

63

49 51

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

SRM Performancemgmt

Ops mgmt Config mgmt Provisioning ILM Compliance

Mar-04 Aug-04

Rank the following storage management functions in order of

importance to you

Virtualization not the answer

70

1411 9 8 6

75

9 118 6 5

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Mar-04 Aug-04

None Software/ array Software/ host

Appliance Software/ switch Software/ standalone server

Describe your plans to purchase storage virtualization technology in

2004

Backup and disaster recovery

The tape to disk transition has begun

33

56

12

43

38

20

49

31

21

2003 Mar-04 Aug-04

No change I ncrease Decrease

How will your use of tape change ?

Disk-to-disk backup gaining steam

51 53

2023

2522

3 2

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

%

I ncrease Stay the same No plans Decrease

Mar-04 Aug-04

Describe your plans for disk to disk backup spending

Most disk strategies include tape, but some hesitancy setting in

53 36 31 11 82

15

41 28 22 10 52

33

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Mar-04 Aug-04

D2D2T D2D to tape archive Disk as file system

VTL WORM disk Single instance

None

Which disk-to-disk backup strategies are you employing?

LTO is dominating tape market

47

9

17

5

1

7

14

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

%

Other

9XXX

SAI T

AI T

SDLT

DLT

LTO

What is the primary format you will select for tape backup in

2005?

Library purchases continue to grow

52

47

1

44

51

4

50

47

3

42

55

3

Mar-03 Sep-03 Mar-04 Sep-04

None 1-10 >10

How many tape libraries will you purchase?Avg slots=203

Tape strong for compliance

54 3315 12 12 11 11

2

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

%

2004

Tape archive

D2D

None

Don't know

Optical WORM

Disk WORM

VTL

Other

Which technologies are you relying on to comply with data retention

regulations?

More on compliance

36

39

1 0

4543

18 18

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

I ncrease Decrease Stay the same None

Mar-04 Aug-04

Describe your purchase plans for backup or archive systems to

comply with data retention regs and laws?

Storage networking

Storage networks still developing

Average respondent has:• 12 switches and plans to add 6 in 2005

• 2.8 fabrics and plans to have 3.1 by end of 2005

71% of switch purchases still for 32 ports or

under; only 7% over 128 ports

36% buying switches to expand SANs, 19% to

build first SAN, 12% to create additional SANs

Islands still main form of SANs – But users indicate intent to migrate to other architectures

19

2422

2527

39

28

38 38

30

1922

18 1822

12 11 10 97

1215

12 1114

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Mar-03 Aug-04 Mar-04 4-Aug Proj. 2005

%

Directors Islands of small switches

Single fabric of core w/edge Other

Islands of large switches surrounded by small switches

What best describes your current switch architecture?

iSCSI getting cautious adoption

No, 83

Yes, with sw driver, 12

Yes, with TOE cards, 6

Will you deploy iSCSI in 2004?

Dedicated iSCSI LAN most common approach

38

23

28

6

1

50

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

%

End-End dedicated LAN End-End shared LAN Gateway to FC SAN

WAN to FC SAN NAS head to iSCSI target Other

How will you deploy iSCSI?

Switch vendor preferences continue to change

42

38 3734

18 17

21 2021

24

21

26

24 3 3

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

2003 Mar-04 Aug-04 Proj. 05

Brocade McData Cisco Qlogic

Who is your primary storage switch vendor?