New WDC Survey Finds Reliability Is More Important Than Cost

by Adam Armstrong January 19, 2016

written by Adam Armstrong January 19, 2016

Western Digital Corporation has once again run its global survey of CIOs and IT decision makers, this being its second annual. What was found this year is that cost is no longer the major consideration when it comes to data storage purchases. As organizations are mining their data more and more to gain insight, reliability is now the top factor when it comes to purchasing data storage. Another interesting items discovered is that IT budgets are actually increasing, perhaps showing that industries are beginning to understand the importance and value of their data now.

Data is growing at tremendous rates, with the Internet of Thing (IoT) leading the charge. More and more organizations are realizing that they can gain key insights from their data, which in turn can lead to a better bottom line. While most polled recognize this value about half said they are not storing all the data they should be. In order to seize these opportunities, companies are sinking more and more money into cold storage and archiving capacity and into data analytics. Another interesting facet of the study was in the increase in budget and activity around the Cloud.

Companies are also recognizing the importance of access to cold data. The traditional notion of store it and forget it type of archiving is vanishing as archived data also holds promise of insights. The need for faster access to old data is going up as more companies are acknowledging this as a pain point.

Key findings of the study include:

When given a choice among five criteria, 39% of IT decision makers cite reliability as the most important factor in purchasing data storage compared to only 25% that cite cost.
89% of IT decision makers surveyed (up slightly from last year) believe that all data has value if [their] organization can store and access it optimally; 85% agree that their business understands the value of data on their bottom line.
However, there is still a disconnect as 55% of those surveyed admit they are not storing all the data necessary for their long-term business needs, and 62% of IT decision makers also identified the ability to access data easily/rapidly or the ability to process data as a top IT challenge, keeping them from realizing the value of the data.
Cloud budgets continue to hold, from last year, as the leading growth area in IT at 61%.
Spending for IT in 2016 is projected to be the highest in energy, manufacturing and finance markets.
The manufacturing and IT/telecom sectors are expected to focus the most on Cloud activities this year, while energy, manufacturing, finance and healthcare show the biggest budget growth in Cloud storage.
84% of respondents are either planning, in progress or have just completed public/private Cloud initiatives. This activity is highest in France (95%) and China (90%).
By the end of 2016, 35% of respondents will have more than half their data stored in the Cloud.
Decision makers acknowledge that their storage demands are growing (80%) and they need to keep up with performance demands of applications (74%).
While budgets are growing, they are not growing enough. 34% of respondents site budget as the largest hurdle keeping them from achieving the full potential of their data center. Budget challenges are the greatest in Japan (54%) and the UK (42%).
China, France and the U.S show the greatest agreement that the Internet of Things is driving a need for change in data centers.
The impact of the Internet of Things is greatest in the energy, finance, IT/telecom, and manufacturing sectors.