Data Center Managers in India expected to "Do More with Less" - Symantec State of Data Center Report 2008

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BANGALORE, India – 29th January, 2009 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today released the India findings of its 2008 State of the Data Center Report. The second annual study found that data center managers are caught between two conflicting goals – more demanding user expectations and higher levels of performance, yet reducing costs remain the primary objective for the data center. The report also found that data center staffing remains problematic, servers, and storage continue to be underutilized and disaster recovery plans requires constant fine-tuning and updatation. Finally, the respondents indicated that while they are pursuing green data center initiatives, they are doing so primarily based on cost benefits.

"This research confirms what we are seeing in the field," said Anand Naik, director, Systems Engineering, Symantec Corporation "Attention has turned to initiatives that will drive immediate cost reduction, rather than longer term ROI driven programs."

Growing Datacenter Complexity

As data centers use equipment from a variety of different storage and server hardware vendors, and these vendors provide unique and discrete tools to manage their own platforms, data centers are getting more and more complex to manage. 75 percent felt that managing data centers is becoming more and more complex. 70 percent felt that their data centers had too many applications to manage easily.

Doing More for Less

Of those surveyed, a staggering 91 percent reported user-expectations are rising rapidly. Furthermore, 52 percent of the respondents felt meeting the service levels demanded by the organization was proving to be difficult. At the same time, 39 percent of respondents felt that improving services levels was by far one of the top challenges that they face today.

When asked to identify their key objectives for the year, reducing costs was by far the most frequently mentioned goal. In fact, reducing costs was mentioned by more companies than the next two objectives combined (improving service levels and improving responsiveness).

The key initiatives data centers are pursuing to "do more with less" include automation of routine tasks (mentioned by 70 percent of respondents), reducing data center complexity (75 percent), and reducing cost (80 percent).

Staffing Remains a Big Issue

According to the study, staffing in Indian data centers remains a crucial issue with 41 percent reporting that they are understaffed while only 7 percent reported being overstaffed. Furthermore, 52 percent say finding qualified applicants is a big or huge problem. In addition, 75 percent respondents felt that skills of data center employees did not match the needs of their position. 61 percent also cited that retaining data center employees was a big problem.

To address the staffing issue companies are leaning on outsourcing and training. 33 percent of companies said they have outsourced their work and the primary driver for outsourcing is to increase the staff's access to specialized skills. Training is seen as strategic by 77percent of the respondents, with 91 percent expecting training budgets to rise or stay constant over the next two years.

Servers and Storage Remain Underutilized

Companies in 2008 reported that their data center servers were operating at just 53 percent of capacity. Data center storage utilization was reported at 54 percent. Not surprisingly, the report found a flurry of activity aimed at increasing utilization in both areas.

The major server-related initiatives include server consolidation (45 percent) and server virtualization (45 percent). For storage the leading initiatives were storage virtualization (36 percent), continuous data protection (34 percent) and storage resource management (41 percent). 50 percent companies said that they were considering implementing data deduplication in the data center.

Disaster Recovery Lags Behind

Data center management continues to report room for improvement in the area of disaster recovery. In fact, 55 percent report that their disaster recovery plan is average or needs work. 18 percent report their plan is informal or undocumented. Companies still find that hardware and software failures are the biggest causes of unplanned downtime, human error and natural disasters follow closely behind.

Green Data Center Driven by Cost

Continuing the trend first spotted in 2007, the data center's focus on "being green" was driven by cost issues in 2008 with social responsibility on the rise. The study asked companies why creating a Green Data Center was important to their workplace. Reducing electricity consumption was mentioned by 54 percent, followed by reducing cooling costs (51 percent) and a sense of responsibility to the community (42 percent).

Report Underscores Need for Solutions

This year's study shows the continuing importance for companies to control data center complexity and costs. With the mandate to literally do more with less, companies are scrambling to find solutions that have an immediate effect on cost and efficiency.

"IT managers and executives are in a tough spot," said Naik. "Cost reduction is a non-negotiable objective this year, while user expectations remain high and demand continues to rise. We are seeing this translate into interest in solutions that provide customers with confidence and deliver immediate benefits in reducing server and storage spend without disrupting today's environment."

About Symantec's State of the Data Center Research

Symantec's second annual State of the Data Center report is the result of a survey conducted in September and October of 2008 by Applied Research. The study targeted 50 companies from India. The companies ranged in size from 5,000 to more than 50,000 employees, with the median company having between 10,000 and 19,999 employees.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security; storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

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