Doing more with less: The state of today's datacenter

Nearly every initiative datacenter managers pursue today has a common goal: getting more work done with fewer resources, according to Symantec's second annual "State of the Data Center" report.

Datacenter managers are being asked to accomplish more and reduce costs, and are responding with various initiatives, from server virtualization and consolidation to automation of routine tasks and cross-training of IT staffs stretched increasingly thin.

[ What technologies can you not afford to cut in the current recession? InfoWorld reveals the top 5 spending priorities you can't compromise on. ]

IT budgets are still rising at some companies, but may not be keeping pace with the increasing amount of work datacenters must perform, Symantec says in a report based on interviews with managers, directors, and vice presidents at 644 companies in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. The companies range in size from 5,000 to more than 50,000 employees, and the median company has 500 IT employees and between 30 and 49 datacenters.

"Expectations are rising faster than the budgets," says Marty Ward, director of product marketing for Symantec's data protection group. "The budgets are still rising -- which we found interesting -- but they're not rising dramatically."

Half of the companies say they anticipate funding increases over the next 12 months, while 34 percent say the budget will stay the same and 16 percent expect decreases. With a deepening recession, Symantec says "one would expect that this finding will change as companies begin to feel the full effect of the financial crisis."

Most of the budget increases are being taken up by costs such as power, infrastructure, and facilities, while discretionary spending is taking a hit, Ward says. Datacenter operators said their top priority was reducing costs, while the goals of improving responsiveness, service levels, and availability were secondary.

The telephone survey was conducted for Symantec at the end of September and in early October by Applied Research-West, a market research firm.

"The IT manager's 'to-do' list is as long as ever," Symantec writes. "Applications continue to grow in number and complexity. Servers remain underutilized. Storage continues to grow but is also underutilized. And disaster-recovery plans -- more important that ever -- are still not fully complete."

Three out of four companies said user expectations are rising gradually or rapidly, while user expectations are falling at only 2 percent of companies. Six out of 10 companies say it's getting more difficult to meet the service levels demanded by the organization, partly because a large portion of IT staffs are understaffed or have trouble finding qualified applicants for open positions.