Trend-watchers have noted a resurgence of the storage service-provider industry.

According to research firm TheInfoPro, nearly 20% of Fortune 1000 organizations outsource at least some portion of their storage-management activities.

The idea of putting the management and ownership of storage in the hands of an outside provider fell out of favor when many dot.com companies failed in 2001. IT professionals preferred to not only own their storage but also manage it. Many also were reluctant to let an upstart service provider control their data.

New research from TheInfoPro, however, shows attitudes may be changing. The majority of financial-services companies outsource their e-mail archiving to companies such as ZANTAZ, Iron Mountain and HP. In addition, about one-third of companies use outsourcing for their day-to-day backup activities, contracting with companies such as Iron Mountain, Arsenal Digital and AmeriVault. More than 15% of the businesses surveyed outsource their disaster recovery sites, cable plants and day-to-day break/fix storage activities.

When it comes to e-mail archiving, 42% archive e-mails now, 6% are evaluating it and 32% have archiving in their plans. Surprisingly, 20% of companies have no plans to archive e-mails.

Whitepapers

• Symantec State of the Data Center Report
• Gene Kim's Practical Steps to Mitigate Virtualization Security Risks
• Monitoring and Managing App Performance
• Monitoring and Managing VoIP
• SNMP Monitoring: One Critical Component to Network Management
• SNMP Monitoring: One Critical Component to Network Management

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• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery
• Tips and Techniques for Remote Data Backup and Delivery
• WAN Optimization Landscape
• Oracle Database 11g: Advances in Compression, Real Application Testing and Data Guard
• Solutions to the Toughest IT Challenges in Remote Offices

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• Executive Guide: Data Center Decisions
• Get More From Your WAN
• Executive Guide: Storage Heats Up
• Network World Executive Guide: Perfecting Application Performance Management

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