I have been traveling around the USA visiting customers for the last two weeks. It has been a long trip and I have heard from a lot of large storage customers that budgets remain constricted. Adding storage capacity that is affordable remains a problem, as does adding staff when corporations are looking to shrink payrolls through attrition. I spoke to a few companies in California that are hiring in other states and countries, but not in California anymore. Staff shortages are creating problems for the folks responsible for data storage managment . Some are looking at outsourcing some of their storage management, but that also costs money which is unavailable.
I spoke with many business owners along the way, and their was not much enthusiasm for investing in infrastructure or people in the current business environment. Almost universally the folks I met with are looking to find incremental savings within their organizations. However, most companies are now running very lean.
It remains an interesting business environment.
