Storage Gurus Offer Their Best Big-Bang Bets

We are drowning in data with no relief in sight. According to Gartner, this growth--as much as 60 percent or more annually--is driving hardware, software, associated maintenance, administration and services costs. But with 2011 IT budgets seeing more restrained growth--barely 7 percent, according to Forrester Research--storage has become the poster child for doing more with less.

NETWORK COMPUTING posed the following question to a distinguished group of storage experts:

"An organization's CFO has just gotten an 'A penny saved is a penny earned!' tattoo and slashed all operating budgets. What is the one new storage expenditure that organization should invest in in 2011, and what argument(s) will help convince the CFO this is a good use of the organization's resources?"

Here's what the experts had to say about keeping your storage boat afloat in 2011.

Joe Clabby, Clabby Analytics: The easy answer is anything that improves storage utilization rates (thus improving return on investment) while cutting down on storage management costs (thus lowering operational costs due to labor). So storage management software with these characteristics would be my choice.