For Many 2009 Means IT Staff and Budget Cuts while the "Do More with Less" Mandate Remains
If companies thought that times were tough over the last few years, 2009 is shaping up to be a doozy. Corporate layoffs, cutbacks in spending and decreased revenue coupled with the looming threat of more government regulation and oversight will make the last few years seem like a cake walk compared to what is to come. But as companies prepare to make even more cutbacks in IT staff and budgets, the "Do more with less" mandate that seems to accompany every round of corporate cutbacks remains. This directive leaves IT survivors needing to identify technology providers that can help them better manage their company's data, recover their enterprise applications more quickly and perform these tasks with minimal training, time and effort.
Just a month ago in October 2008, Gartner
cut its 2009 forecast for IT spending from 5.8 to 2.3 percent and warns that it will cut its forecast even further if the economy continues to weaken. In the month since Gartner issued that forecast, a lot has occurred in the global economy and it does not take a genius to figure out that further cuts in its IT spending forecast are all but a foregone conclusion. One only needs to look at the increase in October's unemployment figures and the headlines about more companies hoping that the government bails them out for this to become self-evident. Further, since IT is the number two expense in most organizations right behind human resources, expect IT budgets to show up next on the chopping block. But as enterprise companies start to look at their 2009 IT budget, where do they begin to cut?In many companies, their IT infrastructure is not a pretty picture. On one front, they see incessant and unending data growth regardless of what occurs in the economy or how many people they lay off. So they cannot automatically cut the amount of storage they are purchasing. Rather they need to examine what tiers of storage they are placing their data on and then ensure that data is ending up on the right storage tiers. But that's time-consuming as placing the data on the right tier of storage at the right time so it meets internal and external requirements is no trivial task. To do this, companies need to look to streamline and automate the placement, movement and retention of data which requires that companies understand their data in the first place and then use that information to place and move it between storage tiers.
Even assuming enterprises deliver on these initial data management and storage optimization objectives, companies still need to protect the data, recover it and then access and search it to meet forthcoming litigation concerns. It is no secret that there is a new President in the White House and part of his mandate (implied or otherwise) is to introduce more accountability into the business and financial world. The logical outcome of this is to expect even more legislation with new regulations and compliance requirements. This translates into companies needing to access and search their data repositories faster with less people than before.
So as companies look at what to keep and cut in their IT budgets, the decision should be based on more than the cost of the technology alone. Rather, companies need to focus on how well their current or proposed technology providers will deliver on these new demands that 2009 will impose upon them to automate and simplify their IT environment. Equally important, companies need to ascertain that vendors are doing everything in their power to work together and deliver on these new objectives.
For instance, the CommVault® Simpana® software suite has long automated many of these aforementioned data management tasks but that does not mean it is standing still. Just today CommVault announced that it is enhancing its strategic relationship with NetApp to better address these emerging corporate archiving, storage optimization and eDiscovery concerns. NetApp reciprocated by also recognizing CommVault as a strategic partner so companies can better use the CommVault Simpana software suite in conjunction with its FAS storage systems to increase storage efficiencies and drive down storage costs.
Though a relationship between CommVault and NetApp has existed for some time (nearly 10 years) and they have provided integration across their respective product lines in archive, backup, replication and eDiscovery during that time, this latest announcement illustrates new synergies that companies can achieve using these products. Since NetApp provides a common platform across all of its storage systems and CommVault delivers an integrated data management platform, companies can realize the benefits that both of these two vendors' products deliver by created a unified infrastructure from the software down to the underlying storage systems. In so doing, the sum of the benefits of using these two platforms in conjunction with one another becomes greater than using them individually.
Most companies see a rough ride ahead in 2009 and for many companies that ride has already begun. Companies are already cutting back on both their IT staff and budgets but are also realizing that they cannot also lower expectations and deliverables because today's world does not permit it. This realization should force companies to change both how they procure technology and what factors influence their buying decisions. This morning's announcement concerning the enhanced strategic relationship between CommVault and NetApp so companies can better automate the management of their IT infrastructure is just one example of the new forces that are at work and for which companies must now account for and take advantage of as they plan for 2009 and make their 2009 technology buying decisions.
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