Unstructured Data Growth Tops Compellent Survey of Data Storage Trends

EDEN PRAIRIE, MN -- (Marketwire) -- 06/16/10 -- A survey of more than 180 customers at Compellents annual user and partner conference, C-Drive, confirmed that files and other unstructured data were the source of the fastest data growth within their storage environments.

The survey was designed to identify the most pressing storage needs facing Compellents customers around the world and included major storage users from most sectors, including healthcare, government, financial services, education, professional services and more.

While over half (51 percent) of those surveyed cited unstructured data as their biggest source of data growth, more than a third (37 percent) still identified structured data, such as databases and customer applications, as their biggest growth challenge, underscoring the need by most organizations for a fluid, unified storage strategy encompassing SAN and NAS.

Meanwhile, a high proportion (67 percent) of users surveyed have chosen to replicate their business-critical data to remote sites for disaster recovery, with only a small subset of users relying on traditional server-based replication solutions (18 percent).

Least surprising was the fact that every Compellent customer (100 percent) is using thin provisioning, a key technology for driving greater storage efficiency while reducing total cost of ownership.

Due to the efficiency and granularity of Compellents automated tiered storage, the survey found that the vast majority (81 percent) of disk upgrades were for cost-effective, high-capacity drives rather than for more expensive, high-performance drives.

C-Drive 2010 took place May 2-6, 2010, in Minneapolis, MN. More than 600 people attended the conference, with 16 countries from around the world represented.

Quotes

• Phil Soran, president and CEO, Compellent: "The results of C-Drive polling reinforce the trends were seeing in the storage industry at-large, validating the need for a more flexible environment where companies can easily manage the growth of structured and unstructured data, as well as utilize an automated, intelligent data movement engine with disaster recovery capabilities. Compellent will continue to focus on architecting a single scalable solution that elegantly meets diverse storage needs."
  
  
• Noemi Greyzdorf, Research Manager for Storage Software, IDC: "Similar to polling results from Compellent C-Drive, IDC research shows that the growth of unstructured data is tremendous. IT departments are looking to leverage scalable and flexible storage architectures, such as Compellents Fluid Data, to keep up with the data growth and data management. Having a single pane of glass through which to manage both structured and unstructured data enables IT departments to do more with the same resources."
  
  

Additional Information

• Scalable zNAS product information page
• Twitter newsfeed: Compellent, CDrive
• "Around the Block" Blog
• Compellent Newsroom
• C-Drive 2011 information and registration

About Compellent
Compellent Technologies (NYSE: CML) provides Fluid Data storage solutions that automate the movement and management of data at a granular level, enabling organizations to constantly adapt to change, slash costs and secure information against downtime and disaster. This patented, built-in storage intelligence delivers significant efficiency, scalability and flexibility. With an all-channel sales network in 35 countries, Compellent is one of the fastest growing enterprise storage companies in the world. For more information and news, visit www.compellent.com and www.compellent.com/news.