Industry news

Demand for online storage services 'strong'

Online storage service demand from companies of all sizes which are facing budgetary pressures is 'very strong', new research shows.

Figures produced by IDC show storage-as-a-service presents a viable alternative to traditional methods, which it believes will change how use of these products is conducted.

The report predicts suppliers which offer a breadth of different solutions will be more successful in the online storage service market and suggests its appeal comes from its cost-reduction potential.

A strong technical background of the company which provides these facilities is also seen as a big advantage.

Laura DuBois, program director for storage software at the analyst, claims there will be two key phases to the uptake of this technology - business continuity and cloud computing.

She says: "Today in the commercial context, online backup and archiving services are the immediate manifestation of the longer-term opportunity for a series of cloud-based services which will impact the storage industry."

According to a survey produced by ONStar at the Gartner Data Centre Summit, 32 per cent of IT professionals did not know what the term unified storage meant.