IT appl are single most critical factor for data growth: NetApp

Mumbai, Oct 14 (UNI) IT applications, including ERP and CRM, have emerged as the single most critical factor for data growth in organizations, according to NetApp's interim findings of its ongoing survey on ''Data Explosion in India: Trends&Challenges'', announced today.

IT applications, including ERP and CRM that forms about 43 per cent, followed by emails/attachments, forming 19 percent, are the major sources of data growth in enterprises, the survey said. In terms of challenges, 24x7 data access that forms 31 per cent and data proliferation at about 15 per cent, were considered to be the major business challenges arising out of this express data growth by respondents. Although mass enterprise IT adoption is a welcome trend, enterprises run the risk of an IT infrastructure break-down, in case the data explosion is not matched by also adopting comprehensive data management solutions, according to the survey.

According to industry estimates, enterprises do not utilize less than half of the storage that they buy. In addition, much of the data stored on disk is redundant. Not only is this a waste of storage, it is a waste of power and floor space, which increase IT costs, the survey said.

The growth in IT applications is expected to escalate further in the coming years, considering the large volumes of transactions recorded by this type of IT applications on a daily basis.

''Replicating data at cost efficient intervals to ensure business continuity is the primary challenge resulting out of huge amounts of data growth,'' Mr Surajit Sen, director, Channels, Alliances&Markets, NetApp India, said.

''Enterprises need to utilize the full potential of their current storage environments in order to match the growing demand. This will also help them defer additional primary storage purchases.

Virtualization, running multiple instances of software (OS/applications) on the same underlying storage infrastructure, is a key technology, which will enable enterprises to scale up their storage capacities and manage data growth efficiently.

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