TORONTO, Ontario – A new survey conducted by SANpulse Technologies finds that technology refreshes are the top priority for 2011. The study was conducted across more than 100 large enterprises, with about two-thirds if responses coming from companies with more than 10,000 employees, and a third from those with less than 10,000.

The survey looked into the priorities data center managers have over the next twelve months as well as the concerns surrounding the most common and difficult tasks they will face in 2011. Data center managers and decision makers were asked to rank data center priorities, based on importance. Individuals were also asked to rank which projects on their 2011 IT roadmap are expected to be the most challenging and difficult to deal with.

The finding that 51 percent of respondents indicated that technology refreshes were the top priority for 2011 highlighted that mean time to migrate (MTTM) was critical for rapid adoption of new technologies and fast execution of these operations. This was followed by data center consolidation, which 41.5 percent of respondents indicated was a top concern. 34.5 percent of respondents indicated the intent to migrate to a public or private cloud; 32.7 percent expect to transition to a virtualized Storage Area Network (SAN); 26.5 percent said that SAN optimization or re-tiering was a priority and 21 percent cited diversification of storage hardware as a top priority.

When asked about the most difficult issues they expect to deal with, 39 percent responded that multi-departmental coordination was a top concern. 35 percent said that server remediation, SAN configuration errors, asset discovery and multi-departmental coordination were all challenging issues. 17 percent said SAN configuration alone. And 3.5 percent said asset discovery alone.

On the topic of SAN migrations and whether or not these activities were completed in a timely manner and met budgetary requirements, 41.5% of the respondents said that only 0-20 percent of their migrations were completed on time and on budget. 62 percent said that 40 percent or fewer migrations completed on time and within budget. Finally, 79 percent have had less than 60 percent of their migrations meet their budgetary/time requirements.

“These results echo what is routinely heard from IT professionals who face these recurring challenges,” said Greg Schulz, founder of the Server and StorageIO Group. “There is no such thing as a data or information recession, This means that as IT budgets for some expand, those organizations also need to do more with what they have including support growth and technology refreshes in 2011.”

“IT organizations focus much of their staff as well as wall or calendar time on data migrations to support technology refresh and upgrades along with consolidation initiatives,” Schulz added. “With the complexities associated with large scale migration or technology updates not to mention multi-departmental workflow coordination, IT organizations stand to recover these resources by reducing their mean time to migrate (MTTM). Many large IT organizations have already implemented phased refresh schedules where each year a portion of their technology gets refreshed. However budgets or spending remain constrained.

“Organizations need to find creative and innovate ways to maximize their IT investments which includes reducing their MTTM, the result of which is to boost their effectiveness by stretching both staff as well as resources (server and storage hardware/software) further,” Schulz said.

The survey concluded that plans to move to a virtualized SAN or to the cloud are in line with trends in the industry and what SANpulse has seen in the field. Companies who have held off on technology purchases for a few years are now upgrading or planning to move to a new platform. Moving to the cloud or towards virtualization, technology upgrades or a data center consolidation all include migration as part of the process.

“The survey confirms our customers’ experiences. Data center consolidation and technology refreshes continue to be what are keeping administrators up at night,” said Joy Burd, vice president of marketing communication for SANpulse Technologies, Inc. “Organizations rely on new technologies and consolidation to remain efficient and competitive, which can be a challenge when called on to do more with the same or less budget. SANpulse streamlines these operations to significantly reduce time requirements while reducing the cost, complexity and risk of traditional manual means.”

This column was written by Mark Cox of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMar.Com

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