Almost half of all enterprise storage managers remain concerned about the reliability of their storage systems, and 63% feel challenged by the need to improve storage utilisation and integrate existing assets into expanding storage area networks (SANs).

These are the findings of an end-users advisory board (EUAB) survey conducted by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Europe and published yesterday. The survey covered 70 IT professionals, including managers, architects, engineers and executives, working for a range of small, medium and large enterprises.

Unsurprisingly, most respondents (76%) see reliability as the major priority for storage systems, closely followed by recovery and continuity at 72%.

Information lifecycle management (ILM) is now seen as a requirement at 62% of organisations, but only just over half (54%) indicated that the need to comply with corporate governance regulations and industry rules would push them to install more data capacity.

However, 68% optimistically believe that disk-to-disk-to-tape technology needed to support ILM and automated email archiving is “ready or almost ready” for this task.