Each year, Fred Moore of Horison Information Strategies compiles what is considered by many to be the single best strategic planning document on the direction of the storage business. One of the more interesting outputs of the work is a set of 'fun facts' that Fred compiles from a variety of sources which is then presented in a way that really makes you think about what's happening in the industry.
This year's version underscores several interesting storage industry trends, including:
- Not surprisingly the pace of storage technology advancements continues on its impressive trajectory.
- The lack of mainframe-class tools on open systems is resulting in a challenge for buyers and an opportunity for vendors.
- Architecting green data centers, a lost art with the rise of distributed systems, is a discipline that is increasingly in demand.
- The growth in unstructured data brings with it enormous management challenges and risks, not the least of which is ensuring compliance.
- The rise of small, including small and medium-sized businesses is driving innovation and growth.
- The flattening of the world hasn't seemed to dramatically alter the storage landscape.
Thanks to Fred for providing the following data points to the Wikibon community:
| Storage Facts, Figures, Estimates and Rules of Thumb |
| This table is compiled from a wide variety of sources and is intended to serve as planning guidelines for storage and data management planning activities. |
| Average annual digital storage demand rate (primary occurrence of data, all platforms) | 35-40% (2006-2008) |
| Amount of magnetic disk data stored on Unix, Windows and Linux systems WW (est.) | >90% |
| Average disk allocation levels for z/OS (eSeries mainframes using DFSMS suite) | 60-80% |
| Average disk allocation levels for iSeries (AS/400 servers) | 60-80% |
| Average disk allocation levels for Unix/Linux systems | 30-45% |
| Average magnetic disk allocation levels for Windows systems | 25-40% |
| Average annual disk drive demand increase | 35-50% (downward trend expected as recording limits begin to appear) |
| Average annual disk drive performance improvement (seek, latency and data rate) | <4% (mainly with data rate, as seek time improvement is minimal) |
| Increase in disk drive capacity per actuator since the first disk drive in 1956 | 200,000x (5MB to 1000 GB) |
| Increase in native tape cartridge capacity since the first tape cartridge in 1984 | 4,000x (200MB to 800 GB) |
| Average data center power consumption | 40 watts per square foot |
| Average power used per blade server rack | 15-30 kilowatts |
| Average cost to build a Tier 3 data center | $480 per square foot |
| Average non-mainframe server busy (% processor busy) | 25-40% |
| Average tape cartridge utilization levels for integrated virtual tape systems | 60-80% |
| Typical range of disk data managed per administrator (for non-mainframe systems –Windows, Unix, Linux) | 500GB – 10TB |
| Typical amount of disk data managed per administrator (z/OS, mainframe) | >50TB |
| Estimated range of automated tape data managed per administrator (all platforms) | 40TB to >1EB (varies widely based on library size) |
| Annual growth rate of unwanted e-mail message traffic | ~350% |
| Estimated percentage of SANs that are homogeneous ( the same operating system) | 70-75% (Mainframes, Unix and Windows systems only) |
| Percent of NAS deployed databases greater than 500GB (est.) | ~10% |
| Average number of spam e-mails delivered every 30 days | >3.65 billion |
| Average size of e-mail in 2007 (est.) | 650kb |
| Number of e-mails sent daily in 2006 (est.) | >35,000,000,000 (billion) |
| Percentage of customers retaining e-mail archives over 7 years | 9% |
| The size of WW wireless calls in PB | 2,300 |
| Percentage of all e-mail traffic that is unwanted | ~90% |
| Percent of companies citing employees as the most likely source of hacking | 77% |
| Percentage of US adults with more than 200GB of storage capacity | 10% (approximately 28 million) |
| Percentage of digital data stored on removable media (primarily magnetic tape) | ~80% |
| Percentage of digital data stored on mobile (portable) technologies | 50-60% |
| Number of new (1st round) data storage companies funded in 2000 | 92 |
| Number of new (1st round) data storage companies funded in 2006 | 2 |
| Total storage companies acquired in 2006 | 100 |
| Number of new small businesses created in the US in 2005 | 550,000 |
| Average revenues of InformationWeek 500 companies in 2006 | $9.776 B (was $12.47B in 2001) |
| Average IT budget of Information Week 500 as a percentage of revenue in 2006 | 3% (was 3.88% in 2001) |
| Average percentage of IT budget in the US spent on IT salaries and benefits | 32% |
| Average percentage of IT budget in the US spent on compliance | 5% |
| Number of mid-market firms in the US in 2005 (100-999 employees) | 93,876 |
| Percentage of IT jobs in businesses with fewer than 99 employees | 72% |
| Projected size of India’s IT services industry in 2010 | $60 B |
| Projected size of China’s IT services industry in 2006 | $8.9 B (est. cagr. 18.9%) |
| Percentage of businesses who take backup tapes offsite daily, weekly, and monthly? | Daily – 56%. Weekly -32%. Monthly - 4%. |
| Data selected from a variety of industry sources. |
| Compiled by: |
| Fred Moore, President |
| Horison Information Strategies http://www.horison.com |
| June 2007 |
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