CommVault has released the results of its IT Storage Spending Survey, which polled a cross-section of more than 350 of its existing, global Simpana software customers. This included individuals responsible for IT budget allocations encompassing storage and data management such as CIOs, vice presidents and IT directors as well as backup, server and storage group managers or administrators.

According to the survey results, managing data growth (i.e., data reduction) is the top budget priority for 2011, followed by network and equipment, disaster recovery, applications/software and data backup and recovery.

Nearly 30 percent of the survey respondents revealed their IT budgets would increase in 2011 while almost 50 percent reported their budgets would remain unchanged in the New Year. Of that IT budget, 43 percent of those polled reported allocating up to 10 percent for overall data protection while another 36 percent planned to spend between 11 and 20 percent of their budget on data protection hardware, software, services/support and media.

Of those surveyed, 54 percent reported no expected increases in IT headcount in 2011; 20 percent reported an increase and 26 percent remained undecided on changes to their staffing in the year ahead.