Symantec said that its 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.  "Doing more with less," Symantec termed it.

The truth is way more complicated than that. The vast majority of these same respondents expect spending to rise for power, IT service assurance, facilities, infrastructure, and applications, which is every category in the report.

Other report results suggest that that data center staffing remains problematic, servers and storage continue to be underutilized, and disaster recovery plans are out of date.  Finally, the respondents indicated that while they are pursuing green data center initiatives, they are doing so primarily based on cost benefits.  

The 13-page report makes fascinating reading, and for good reading between the lines as data center personnel continue to be buffeted by change.

Symantec has made the report available on its website, and it has also been posted in the white paper section of the Mission Critical web page.