The most prevalent approach to dealing with data overload, cited by 43% of executives, is to simply keep adding more hardware—namely, disks—to keep up. One-third of respondents will also simply keep adding new devices to keep storage under control.
To Meet the Data Boom, Enterprises Will …
Add disk capacity to existing NAS and SAN devices...43%
Add NAS and SAN devices...33%
Data deduplication...26%
Database-level compression...25%
Implement file system or storage system compression...22%
Add all-flash devices...14%
Implement a formal information lifecycle management process...14%
Invest in purpose built storage appliances and engineered systems...13%?
Adopt private cloud storage...11%
Move storage capacity to public cloud providers...9%?
About one-quarter of respondents opt to employ software-driven approaches to manage their data loads—such as data deduplication, database-level compression, or file system or storage system compression. While cloud is growing as a key piece of storage architectures, only 10% of respondents perceive private cloud to be a storage-bursting mechanism for storing excess data loads—and few consider public cloud to be such a mechanism.
Instead, cloud services—specifically public—are valued by data managers as ways to back up and recover their data. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they view cloud services as a way to support database backups. One in four said they see cloud services as ways to spin up new development and test environments, as well as to provide data warehousing capabilities. One in four respondents said they also see cloud as a file-sharing venue, as well as a place to store older data.