Why are regional storage managers so paranoid?

Managers in charge of storage have a lot to worry about, but there seems no particular reason why people in this corner of the world should be more concerned about security than anything else. Why is it that securing our data matters more to us than accessing it?

Digging around for background on storage buying habits in the enterprise recently, I came across Forrester's storage buyer profiles for IT decision makers in the Asia-Pacific area.

Asked to rank their priorities, the 485 individuals surveyed came up with a clear top four: improving data protection, consolidating storage, working on data retention and archiving, and updating their storage infrastructure.

None of these approaches is in itself particularly surprising. What is odd is that Asia-Pacific managers don't have the same priorities as their counterparts in North America and Europe, whose main concerns were more or less the reverse of those in this corner of the world.

AP storage managers were also noticeably less interested in virtualisation -- generally considered the next big mountain to conquer in storage management.

To paraphrase a chocolate vending scientist, why is it so? One possibility is the relative immaturity of growing regional markets such as China -- if you're only just getting around to proper storage management, security is bound to be a bigger consideration than re-architecting.

However, that argument doesn't apply to the more mature regional markets, such Japan, Australia and Singapore, which still account for a hefty chunk of local spending (and a large proportion of the survey).

Vendors hawking virtualisation solutions (and that covers most players in this market) will presumably need to work harder on selling those concepts to local managers. In the meantime, those looking for a quick sale might as well talk up the security credentials. Anything to make a sale, hey boys?