F5 Networks released the results of an online survey that shows the storage virtualization market is set to grow. The study reveals the percentage of U.S. enterprises that use storage virtualization solutions will more than double from 21 percent to 47 percent in the next few years.

“This study confirms what our customers and partners are experiencing on the street,” said Nigel Burmeister, Director of Product Marketing at F5. “IT managers have moved beyond early exploration, and are now achieving real benefits from mainstream storage virtualization projects.”

The survey found that a primary driver for enterprise interest in storage virtualization is reduction in operating expense and capital investment. Underscoring their interest in reducing costs, respondents indicated that 20 percent of IT labor is spent on storage-related activities such as provisioning, backup, and moving data.

“We continue to see enterprise storage requirements grow at a remarkable rate, particularly for file-based, unstructured data,” said Steve Bishop, CTO at VeriStor Systems. “As a solutions provider specializing in advanced data storage and virtualization architectures, VeriStor is constantly seeking ways to help our customers reduce storage costs, improve resource utilization, and simplify storage administration. Technologies such as F5’s Intelligent File Virtualization are key to enabling those types of solutions.”

Other findings from the survey included:

• Respondents stressed the need for storage virtualization solutions to work with a heterogeneous storage infrastructure. Sixty-three percent of U.S. companies rated this as important or very important.
• Respondents showed a strong interest in solutions that address file-based storage — with 80 percent of respondents who are planning to deploy storage virtualization confirming this as part of their plan.
• Existing storage virtualization users reported high success rates. Eighty-six percent of all U.S. companies reported achieving at least one or more of their original goals.

The survey of 324 medium- and large-enterprise IT organizations in the U.S. and Europe was conducted in February. Responding companies included 211 from the U.S., 68 from the U.K., 16 from Germany, and 29 from other European countries. The survey has a confidence level of 95 percent with an interval of +/- 5 percent.

For additional survey information and results, please visit: www.f5.com/pdf/news/20080404-state-of-storage-virtualization.pdf.