Five Predictions for Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Disk Storage Solutions and Systems, 2011

This IDC Study suggest that 2011 will most likely be a year when disk storage systems move beyond being considered "plumbing," to being of greater importance to the business executive. The continual growth of data, leading to the demands for more disk space, and the corresponding purchases necessary, mean that this is one area of the IT budget that will come under greater scrutiny than before. Like it or not, greater efficiency within the storage systems will be critical to the efficiency of the business.

Vendors will need to more acutely align their offerings to how this can drive greater efficiency. Channel partners will need to evolve their offerings to stay relevant to their customers in the face of competition from the principal and cloud offerings.

CIOs will be faced with greater scrutiny and consequently pass those demands on to the vendors.

According to Simon Piff, director, Enterprise Infrastructure Research, "The overall market is still healthy with anticipated growth. However, storage spending will gradually shift to have a greater investment into the storage technologies that will drive efficiency, and therefore a corresponding, although small, shift away from the hardware and disks that have traditionally been the focal point of investment."