This survey also revealed that of their primary disk expenditures, hard drive replacement is up 11% among users, as can be seen in the chart below. While insignificant, these numbers will only increase going forward and VARs and systems integrators should watch for shifts in user attitudes as to which vendors' products to consider for future purchases.
For instance, Manhattan Diagnostic Radiology's IT director Joseph Gomez recently replaced a three-year-old CX300 system from well-known storage vendor EMC with a SATABeast from lesser-known Nexsan Technologies.
(For additional chart details, visit
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SearchStorage.com.)
Storage Buying Guide
Part 1: What are your customers buying?
Part 2: Increased SATA hard drive adoption
Part 3: Hard drive replacement
Part 4: Production iSCSI SAN interest rises
Part 5: Less data storage management spending
Part 6: Respond to customers' storage buying habits
About the author: Jerome Wendt is an independent writer and analyst specializing in the field of open systems storage and storage area networks. He has managed storage for small and large organizations in this capacity.
This was first published in December 2006
Channel Strategies for the CIO