Managers pressured to do 'more with less'

Symantec has released the findings of its 2008 state of the data centre report that finds data centre managers caught between two conflicting goals — more demanding user expectations and higher levels of performance, yet reducing costs.

The report also finds that data centre staffing remains problematic, servers and storage continue to be underused and disaster recovery plans are out of date.

Respondents indicated that while they are pursuing green data centre initiatives, they are doing so primarily based on cost benefits.

Of those surveyed, 75% reported user expectations are rising gradually or rapidly. Furthermore, 60% of the respondents saw meeting the service levels demanded by the organisation to be more difficult or much more difficult to meet. Only 10% saw service levels to be easier to meet.

Nonetheless, when asked to identify their key objectives for the year, reducing costs was by far the most frequently mentioned goal. In fact, reducing costs was mentioned by more companies than the next two objectives combined (improving service levels and improving responsiveness).

The key initiatives data centres are pursuing to "do more with less" include automation of routine tasks (mentioned by 42% of respondents), cross-training staff (40%) and reducing data centre complexity (35%).

According to the study, staffing remains a crucial issue with 36% reporting that they are understaffed while only 4% reported being overstaffed. Furthermore, 43% say finding qualified applicants is a big or huge problem.

To address the staffing issue, companies are leaning on outsourcing and training. Nearly half (45%) outsource primarily to give data centre staff more time to focus on other tasks. The top three leading IT functions that businesses are outsourcing include business continuity (46%), backups (43%) and storage management (39%).

Training is seen as strategic by 68% of the respondents, with 78% expecting training budgets to rise or stay constant over the next two years.

Companies in 2008 reported that their data centre servers were operating at just 53% of capacity. Data centre storage use was even lower at 50%. Not surprisingly, Symantec found a flurry of activity aimed at increasing use in both areas.