Firms want energy efficient storage, says survey

IT departments want storage vendors to cut the amount of power their products require, according to a survey of executives.

BridgeHead Software's annual information lifecycle management audit surveyed 148 UK IT executives, 84 per cent of which said storage vendors should do more to improve the energy efficiency of their products.

Another 60 per cent said they were interested in finding ways to more efficiently manage their data storage, with 70 per cent saying they believed better management could cut their energy use.

Three-quarters of UK executives cited power costs as the main driver to cut usage, with the environment and power capacity concerns coming second and third.

But Tony Cotterill, chief executive of BridgeHead, said that firms could also benefit from moving more of their stored data to systems which don't require power, as nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said that 30 to 50 per cent of their data on their primary disk is not likely to ever be accessed.

"There is nothing wrong with demanding more energy efficient solutions from vendors, but many organisations could improve energy efficiency by cutting the data they hold on spinning disk," said Cotterill, in a statement. "While they may need to keep this data for legal or regulatory reasons, they can save power by taking it off to tape, optical disk, removable disk or other systems which do not consume power unless being accessed."

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