A New Demographic

When we launched the Storage UPDATE email newsletter, we wondered just who our readers would be—what jobs and responsibilities they would have in what kinds of enterprises. Enough recipients have now responded to our recent storage survey (although at 130, the sample is still small) to offer you some results.

First, roughly half of the 130 respondents are Storage UPDATE readers; the remainder are Windows 2000 Magazine readers. When the 59 Storage UPDATE readers are considered alone, I find many of their responses to be similar.

When asked how much storage respondents manage for themselves and others, 27 percent replied less than 100GB; 45 percent replied 100GB to 1TB; and 22 percent replied 1TB to 10TB. Only 7 percent manage more than 10TB of data. (All percentages are plus or minus 1 percent.) Enterprise storage deployments were split into the following categories: 33 percent with less than a TB; 12 percent with 1TB to 3TB; 20 percent with 3TB to 10TB; and 12 percent in the range of 10TB to 50TB. Charted over the past 3 years, respondents all reported substantial growth.

The most commonly used backup program is Veritas Backup Exec (60 percent), followed by Computer Associates' (CA's) ArcServeIT (38 percent), and Veritas NetBackup and Legato Networker (19 percent). In this category, some respondents marked more than one backup program, boosting the percentages over 100 percent. I was surprised to learn that Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) OpenView, at 43 percent, was by far the most commonly used network management software, followed by CA's Unicenter, at 18 percent. (Keep in mind that these numbers apply to our readership and are by no means market share numbers.)

A large minority respondents indicated that they work in heterogeneous networking environments: 57 percent of respondents work in an all Windows shop, 32 percent in a largely Windows shop, 12 percent in a partially Windows shop. No respondents to this survey worked in a non-Windows shop. Respondents indicated that they use the following systems to attach their enterprise storage systems: Sun Solaris (43 percent); HP-UX (35 percent); IBM AIX (33 percent); Linux (29 percent); and Novell Netware, AS/400, and OS/390 (21 percent).

When asked about Storage Area Networks (SANs), respondents told us that 19 percent have a SAN in place and that 35 percent plan to install one within a year. Another 19 percent plan to install a SAN within 2 to 3 years, and 22 percent have no plans for SANs. The technology appears to be relatively new for this group—as is reflected in average SAN attachment rates of less than 20 servers or other storage devices (54 percent) or from 20 to 100 (15 percent). Typical SAN capacity was evenly split among the capacity ranges we measured, with 34 percent reporting 1TB or less, and 25 percent reporting 1TB to 10TB. Improved storage management (92 percent) is the reason most cited for SAN use. Database/data warehousing is the application most commonly used on a SAN. Reported network attached storage (NAS) use was low: 63 percent reported no NAS deployment; 21 reported NAS use.

Respondents reported that 25 percent of them work in the storage industry; 75 percent don't. A nearly equal number marked each company size category: less than $1 million (11 percent); $1 million to $10 million (5 percent); $10 million to $100 million (18 percent); $100 million to $1 billion (19 percent); more than $1 billion (19 percent); and don't know (28 percent).

I could say more—correlate deployment with enterprise size, describe the tendency to use multiple vendors, note what respondents find most important in their vendors' offerings—but I'm out of space. Look for more storage information in a separate article on the Windows 2000 Magazine Research Web site to be launched next month. I particularly want to thank those respondents who took the time to complete the survey and make this column possible.