Dell survey showcases decision makers' data center preferences

Mon, 1st Aug 2016

FYI, this story is more than a year old

By Sara Barker, Copywriter and Senior News Editor

Dell's State of IT Trends 2016 report paints a clear picture for data center operators as IT leaders realize the power of data center and cloud spending in their quest for digital transformation.

More organisations (88% of IT decision makers and 80% of business decision makers) are adopting a software-defined data center (SDDC), transitioning to one or have already transitioned to one.

Fifty-seven percent of IT decision makers put more emphasis on increased scalability, compared to only 40% of business decision makers, however both groups believe that SDDCs must be flexible, simple, efficient and cost-saving.

Open data center technologies may be the way of the future as 61% of IT decision makers and 57% of business decision makers say they plan to use more open data center technologies.

How should data center operators capitalise on IT needs? 86% of IT decision makers and 85% of business decision makers believe that "compute-centric" is the best method of gaining a flexible, scalable and open center.

In addition, SDDCs need to consider hyperconverged solutions at the first step in helping businesses achieve their goals, as 85% of IT decision makers and 81% of business decision makers agree that this is the most important first step they will take in their transition.

Thirty-five percent of IT decision makers and 29% of business decision makers also perceive the future of SDDCs as being a hybrid cloud platform, while 24% in each group believe they will be hosted on an on-site data center.

Decision makers also believe the SDDCs will be powered by open technology that supports application and data portability across process management, instead of proprietary vendor hardware and solutions.

Amongst the top concerns amongst all decision makers about their data center were quickly addressing issues, long-term data asset health, and the amount of resources needed to manage the data center.

Dell's survey measured responses from 700 IT decision makers and 500 business decision makers in Japan, India, China, Brazil, Germany, the UK and the US.