TEST : IS MY STORAGE STRATEGY OPTIMISED?

Is your storage strategy optimised? Do you apply the best practices? Are you a prudent IT manager? Pragmatic? An expert? An innovator? To find out and to benchmark yourself against your peers, take this self-diagnosis of 32 key questions and:

•  Discover your personal profile compared to the average European IT Manager
•  Identify your position regarding best practices and winning strategies
•  Discover our recommendations

This test is based on the results of an exclusive IDC/Bull survey: “The optimisation of storage: stakes, difficulties and winning strategies of European companies”.

What is the annual growth of the volume of stored data in your company?
less than 5%   +20% to +50%   more than 100%  
+ 5% to +10%   +50% to +75%      
+10% to +20%   +75% to +100%      


How important are the following factors in the growth of stored data in your company?
On a scale of 1 to 5 where: 1 = not important 5 = very important. (NOTE: 1 to 5)
    Not Little Rather Important Very

The use of messaging and attachments

Your company's Internet or e-commerce strategy

Regulatory constraints (e.g. data archiving)

Organic growth of the company

Multimedia files

The dematerialisation of processes and company data (ERP, CRM, BI, etc.)

External growth through mergers or acquisitions

What are your company's priorities for the next two years in terms of storage?
On a scale of 1 to 5 where: 1 = not a priority 5 = major priority. (NOTE: 1 to 5)
    Not Little Rather Important Very

Guarantee continuous activity in case of failure or incident

Increase data availability and recovery

Guarantee company data archiving

Manage the increase in data volumes

Reduce energy costs of storage infrastructure (electricity consumption)

Reduce costs related to storage

Have you put in place the following procedures or do you plan to do so?

  No no project
- within 12 months		 no project - after 12 months Yes

Prioritisation of the value of data to optimise storage

Data archiving

Business Continuity

Centralised or virtual storage architecture

Backup of data on disk or tape

Have you put in place advanced protection and data recovery technologies?

  No no project
- within 12
months		 no project
- after 12
months		 Yes

Data deduplication (capacity optimised storage)

CDP (Continuous Data Protection)

Virtual Tape Library (VTL) or Disk-to-Disk to Tape

Synchronous data replication

Asynchronous replication

What initiatives have you taken to control storage costs?
Please tick one

Outsourced the entire storage infrastructure

       

Delegated storage infrastructure administration

       

Used a storage-as-a-service (SAAS) model

        

Deduplicated data

       

Virtualised storage

       

Optimised disk space by tiering stored data

        

Consolidated storage in SAN (Storage Area Network)

        

Centralised storage administration