Datacentres under fire from vendor duo

Datacentres not performing well enough and are not ready for boom in connected devices, claim LSI and Brocade

Datacentres have come in for flack from storage vendors for being unable to cope with increased amounts of data or perform well enough.

According to research from storage vendor LSI, three quarters of datacentre managers do not feel their systems are providing the performance level they require.

At the same time, storage vendor Brocade has claimed that datacentres are "nowhere near ready" for the surge in connected devices expected in the coming years.

LSI's survey, which questioned 412 datacentre managers from companies across Europe including IBM, Micro-P and EMC, showed that although 93 per cent of those asked said performance was important, only 26 per cent were satisfied with the results they are getting.

Lost revenue, loss of customers and lack of competitive edge were cited as problems caused by poorly performing datacentres, with 65 per cent of respondents saying they want them to perform between twice and four times as fast as they currently do.

Tony Afshary, marketing director at LSI, said: "The survey reaffirms the need for strong performance improvements in datacentres specifically around system intelligence and application acceleration given the growing challenges of the data deluge."

According to figures from telecom industry body GSMA, the number of connected devices is set to double to nearly 12 billion by 2020, a figure which Brocade's UK manager Marcus Jewell said will leave datacentres unable to cope.

He added: "The growth in connected devices represents perhaps the most exciting development in IT since the birth of the web, but current infrastructure is nowhere near ready to deliver it.

"Datacentre networks will be overwhelmed by the burden of traffic, and if this boom is to become a reality, it will require huge advances in storage and network capacity – far more than is being planned for by datacentre operators at the moment."