“Reducing complexity” is a top priority for data center managers in 2010, according to the findings of Symantec’s third annual State of the Data Center study. The study, based on surveys of 1,780 data center managers in 26 countries in November 2009, also found that application sprawl is a key data center concern, and that organizations continue to struggle with disaster recovery planning.

Half of all enterprises say applications are growing somewhat/quickly and half are finding it difficult and costly to meet service level agreements (SLAs). One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Software that supports heterogeneous environments and eliminates islands of information is particularly important for midsize enterprises that are aggressively adopting new technologies because they can reduce complexity in the data center.

Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data, causing 71 percent of organizations to consider data reduction technologies such as de-duplication. Data center administrators need to manage storage across heterogeneous server and storage environments in a way that enables them to stop buying storage by leveraging new technology adoption such as storage resource management, thin provisioning, de-duplication, storage virtualization and continuous data protection and recovery. A holistic approach to storage management can control storage budget growth and often postpone storage purchases. Organizations should deploy de-duplication closer to the information source to eliminate redundant data and reduce storage and network costs.

Are You Prepared?

There continues to be room for improvement in disaster recovery. One-third of disaster recovery plans are undocumented or need work, and important IT components — such as cloud computing, remote offices and virtual servers — are often not included. Compounding the issue, almost one-third of enterprises haven’t re-evaluated their disaster recovery plan in the last 12 months.

Disaster recovery testing is invaluable, but can significantly impact business, according to Symantec. Enterprises should seek to improve the success of testing by evaluating and implementing testing methods that are non-disruptive.

Virtual machine protection also continues to be a focus for enterprises, with 82 percent of enterprises considering virtual-machine technologies in 2010. Respondents cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection. Symantec recommends that organizations deploy a single, unified platform for physical and virtual machine protection to simplify information management.

Most enterprises have 10 or more data center initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and 50 percent expect “significant” changes to their data centers in 2010.  The study found that security, backup and recovery, and continuous data protection are the most important initiatives in 2010. Eighty-three percent of enterprises rated security somewhat or absolutely important. Seventy-nine percent said backup and recovery is somewhat/absolutely important and 76 percent rated continuous data protection as one of their top initiatives.

Losing Weight

The top three technology priorities for 2010 are virtualization, cloud computing and Web 2.0, according to a Gartner survey conducted in the fourth quarter of 2009. Business intelligence, the No. 1 technology the past five years, dropped to the No. 5 priority.

These changing priorities reflect a shift in business expectations from a focus on greater cost efficiencies to achieving better results based upon enterprise and IT productivity. To meet these expectations, IT organizations are transitioning from “heavy” owner-operated solutions to “lighter-weight” services. The goal of this transition is to enable IT to move beyond managing resources to managing results.

“These technologies, implemented properly, create the opportunity for IT to change its role and the operational performance of the enterprise,” said Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner Executive Programs. “Asymmetric technologies like virtualization, cloud and Web 2.0 enable companies to get out from under a front-loaded heavy investment model that limits IT’s agility and flexibility.”

Exploiting these strategic, “lighter-weight” technologies provides the cost, capacity and capability gains needed to define, source, create and deploy information- and process-intensive solutions that will reshape IT and its future role. Moreover, these technologies can be implemented quickly and without significant upfront expense. Instead of investing millions of dollars to get millions in benefits, organizations can make upfront investments measured in thousands of dollars to get those same benefits.

“While enterprises will transition at different rates and times, every CIO faces the need to raise productivity, create new capabilities and use the recovery to drive fundamentals of the current agenda and the repositioning of IT,” McDonald said. “Such transitions will not happen overnight but they will start with the decisions and directions established in 2010.”