A new study from Gartner says data growth is the biggest data center hardware infrastructure challenge for large enterprises. If you've already noticed this, you're not alone.

Forty-seven percent of survey respondents ranked data growth in their top three challenges, followed by system performance and scalability at 37 percent, and network congestion and connectivity architecture at 36 percent. Sixty-two percent of respondents reported that they will be investing in data archiving or retirement by the end of 2011 to address the data growth challenge.

As a Gartner analyst put it:

While all the top data center hardware infrastructure challenges impact cost to some degree, data growth is particularly associated with increased costs relative to hardware, software, associated maintenance, administration and services. Given that cost containment remains a key focus for most organizations, positioning technologies to show that they are tightly linked to cost containment, in addition to their other benefits, is a promising approach.

And not just technologies, but people, too. Talent in this field is in high demand as organizations struggle to revamp their data strategies quickly. In fact, 62 percent of them say they will begin investing in projects or continue their current investment in them through year-end 2011, focusing not just on storage but also system performance and scalability, not to mention network congestion. -- Don Willmott