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Data is exploding across the enterprise landscape—and with it, a need to store it all somewhere. Previously, organizations had all this under control—data was managed within a database and stored as relational files on nearby disks.
Now, however, enterprise data growth comes from increasing volumes of unstructured, social media, and machine-generated data.
How and where is all this data going to be stored? How can it still be made available, on demand, to users and applications that need information right away? How much does this take away from enterprise efficiency? These are the questions asked in a recent survey among members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and its global partner organizations. The survey was underwritten by Oracle and conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. A total of 217 IT and data managers and professionals responded to the survey, representing a wide range of organization types and sizes and industry verticals. (“Managing Exploding Data Growth in the Enterprise: 2014 IOUG Database Storage Strategies Survey”)
Storage issues impact performance of associate applications
The survey reveals that enterprises have been encountering storage issues that have impacted the performance of associated applications and systems. There needs to be more work done to manage storage “smartly”—versus simply adding more disk capacity to existing systems or purchasing new systems from year to year. Smarter storage solutions include increased storage efficiency through data compression, information lifecycle management and consolidation, or deployment strategies such as tiered storage. At the same time, storage expenditures keep rising—eating a significant share of IT budgets and impeding other IT initiatives. For those with significant storage issues, the share storage takes out of IT budgets is even greater.
Inadequately configured, overloaded, or under-performing storage resources have a direct impact on the business by slowing down the performance of applications and systems. This happens across many enterprises, the survey finds. A majority of respondents, 53%, say at least some of the time, their database or application performance is limited by storage. About one out of 10, 9%, report that database or application performance is limited by shortcomings in storage a significant number of times.
How Often Database or Application Performance Is Limited by Storage
<5% of time - 33%
6% to 10% of time - 20%
11% to 25% of time - 23%
26% to 50% of time - 6%
>50% of time - 3%
Don’t know/unsure - 14%
(Totals do not equal 100% due to rounding.)
This challenge is not likely to let up in the near future. There likely will be a continuing—if not increasing—stream of data coming into enterprises in the months and years to come. Respondents intend to keep adding storage capacity to existing systems or purchase new storage systems to support their Oracle Database environments in the coming year, the survey shows. At least 14% of respondents plan to increase their storage by more than 50%, while 24% say they expect to increase it by 26% to 50%. Overall, 76% expect some type of an increase.
Additional Storage Capacity to Be Added Over Next Year
None - 7%
1% to 25% - 38%
26% to 50 - 24%
51% to 75% - 6%
76% to 100% - 5%
>100% - 3%
Don’t know/unsure -17%
The largest consumers of data storage are enterprise or ERP-style applications, and this is where most data is coming from, versus unstructured data sources.