The good news is that the storage portion of IT budgets is increasing.

Its “share” within IT budgets went from 9.5% in the prior study to 13.5% now.

The bad news is that the number of actual dollars being allocated is declining.

Article by Nikolay Yamakawa in 451 Research.

Emphasis in red added by me.

Brian Wood, VP Marketing

——

Overall enterprise IT spending shrinks faster than storage budgets

We expect 2014 to be a tough year for storage professionals and vendors as budgets continue to tighten.

It is not just storage, though – overall IT budgets are shrinking even faster, contributing to a larger proportion of storage in average IT spending.

Despite tightening storage budgets in the past two years, our study participants experienced capacity growth in excess of Moore’s Law as they tackled unprecedented data growth. Ability to do more with less is becoming an upper management expectation that is affecting not only storage, but IT as a whole.

The recently completed Wave 18 Storage Study shows that storage-specific budgets grew as a proportion of average IT spending from 9.5% in the prior study to 13.5% now.

The growth of storage budget as a proportion of the overall IT fund allocation comes at a time when the average storage budget at both large and midsize enterprises has declined between the studies. The increase in the storage budget portion of IT spending is because the overall IT budgets reported by commentators shrank more than storage budgets.

There are many factors affecting the size of storage and overall IT budgets at large and midsize enterprises from different industry verticals. In our latest study, storage professionals from the energy/utility industry vertical report the highest storage budget as a proportion of the average IT spending, amounting to 27%, while materials/chemicals have the least, accounting for just 4%.

The expectation of being able to do more with less is putting pressure on IT professionals and vendors, but at the same time provides opportunities for technologies that enable more efficient operations, such as thin provisioning, automated tiering and cloud, among others.

Wave 18 Storage Study participants had the following commentary about budgets at their enterprises:

• “We expect a flat storage budget going forward because of the increased storage technology options like thin provisioning.” – LE, Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals
• “Seeing large demand without an expanding budget.” – LE, Financial Services
• “Refreshing storage that is four years old with appropriate budget is difficult.” – LE, Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals
• “Budgets are decreasing, no one wants to spend money.” – LE, Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals

https://451research.com/report-short?entityId=81635&type=mis&alertid=277&sftoken=0036000001QW73iAAD