Gridstore, a provider of software defined storage solutions, has announced findings from a new study on the top IT pain points impacting today's mid-market enterprises. The study revealed that managing the storage lifecycle due to staggering data growth is a significant challenge for IT administrators. Organizations are faced with the need to both overcome storage limitations and the resulting complexity and expense of storage upgrades and over-provisioning storage to accommodate for this growth.

According to IDC, over 1.8 zettabytes of data was created last year in the form of files, email and video and will account for 90% of all data created in the next decade. This data proliferation is impacting businesses of all sizes, yet the number of IT professionals available to manage all that data will only grow by 1.5 times today's levels.

Key findings of the study found that during a major storage upgrade:

• 55% of mid-market enterprises experienced business and end user disruption
• 32% experienced failed upgrade process where migrations didn't complete, and
• 9% lost data or access to data during the migration

As many as 71% of the survey respondents reported that they were adding storage and capacity every 6 to 12 months. The majority (63%) of those surveyed had a storage environment of between 50 and 250 TB in capacity.

When asked what their top challenges are today, the survey respondents commented that keeping it cost effective, responsive and adequate for growing businesses needs; backing up vast amounts of data; catching up with the growth of data and the expense to do that; and, hitting capacity limits too quickly were their top concerns.

To solve the mid-market's storage challenges, Gridstore offers The Grid, an award-winning solution that scales easily to match the dynamics of business. The Grid allows you to pay as you grow and only what you need, when you need it. There are no limits on performance, bandwidth or capacity. This eliminates the challenge of storage forecasting, the high cost of over provisioning and the risk of migration.

"Mid-sized enterprises are feeling the pain of trying to keep up with staggering amounts of data and are trying to solve the problem with monolithic storage solutions that don't meet their business requirements," said Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. "Organizations are forced to purchase expensive storage every 6 to 12 months, adding complexity and risk that is disruptive to their business. The Grid gives organizations a simple building block approach to solving their storage dilemma allowing them to achieve the capacity and performance they need- at the time they need it - without costly over provisioning or risky forklift upgrades."

For more information on the Gridstore survey, please visit: http://www.gridstore.com/pdf/Gridstore-ProductBrief-StorageLimits.pdf.

About Gridstore

Gridstore is the leading provider of software defined storage that turns simple storage building blocks into the world's most powerful and affordable storage without limits. Gridstore brings the era of mainframe-style monolithic storage and its disruptive forklift upgrades to an end. The Grid allows businesses to start small and pay as they grow to any size while growing more powerful with each additional block. We eliminate the frustrations of planning and forecasting for the unknown. No more headaches, no more disruption to the business. Now you can effortlessly give your organization the powerful storage it demands. Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information, please visit: http://www.gridstore.com.

• Gridstore Survey Reveals 55 Percent of Mid-Market Enterprises Experience Business Disruption Due to Data Storage Upgrades
• Virtacore Joins VMware vCloud Express(TM) Program With Launch of First Infrastructure-as-a-Service Offering for the Mid-Market
• UGS Extends CAM Leadership to Mid-Market, Introduces NX CAM Express