The recession is and the recession isn’t. It’s an odd beast that way. As I noted in an earlier post, the recessionary economy hasn’t yet translated to massive IT job losses — at least not yet. There are winners and losers, something that’s true in just about any economic climate. And right now, technologies that save on overall IT costs are very much in demand.
James Koopmann’s post on the DCIG blog today argues this case eloquently. He points out that Gartner has recently estimated that storage as an industry is growing by 11.3% a year, and quotes analyst Jon Collins of Freeform Dynamics who says there is “no recession in storage” due to the fact that data continues to pile up. While some large companies are announcing layoffs, there is a great deal of potential for growth in certain key areas of storage.
Writes James:
“When the economy goes south, there tends to be a greater necessity and, as a result, a greater push for companies to find innovative technologies that will help them reduce their TCO.”
He is discussing thin provisioning (a technology that is not only good for a company’s bottom line, but has also yielded a really nice rap song). However, this could apply to many of the forward looking technologies that are out there, including, I’d like to mention, the type of next generation optimization solutions offered by Ocarina Networks and others that free up disk capacity.
As James notes, one thing companies need to watch is whether both CapEx and OpEx costs are being lowered. For example, a new offering may claim to save you on costs, but if it requires that you replace your existing storage, it’s a CapEx headache at the very least.
With all this in mind, innovation is taking the storage world by storm these days, which is translating into a healthier industry overall.
Isn’t it great to hear some positive news for a change?
