Compared to 59% in North America

Almost two-thirds of Western European organizations expect their storage budgets to increase in the coming year.

This finding is based on recent surveys of storage growth trends by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), an IT research, analysis, and strategy firm.

According to the research report, even organizations that will decrease their storage budgets plan to keep the decreases relatively small.

ESG surveyed 307 IT and storage professionals in the UK, France, and Germany, who are responsible for evaluating, purchasing, or managing storage at midmarket (i.e., 100 to 999 employees) and enterprise (i.e., 1,000 or more employees) organizations . The survey questions were the same questions posed in a separate ESG survey of IT and storage professionals in North America (United States and Canada). The results of the two research projects provide information about the similarities and differences in storage technology purchasing, deployment, and management in Western Europe compared to North America.

In 2013, more than half (63%) of organizations in Western Europe expect their storage budgets to grow compared to the prior year. For comparison, 59% of North American organizations will increase their storage budgets. At the same time, storage budgets will stay the same at 29% of Western European organizations and 34% of North American organizations.

The research also reported findings on storage purchasing, deployment, and management.

In many cases, the survey findings in Western Europe and North America were quite similar, for example, storage growth trends were about the same in the two geographies.