More firms are waking up to the benefits of storage area networks (SANs), citing improved availability and access, reduced downtime and increased data security as the main reasons for implementation.

Marketing and research consultancy Macarthur Stroud International (MSI) reports that 40 percent of European firms now have SANs. A further nine percent have mixed SAN and network attached storage (NAS) environments. However, 43 percent have not yet migrated from direct attached storage (DAS) systems.

Of the 450 IT professionals questioned by MSI, most said their primary requirements for data storage were for fast data access, security, and efficient and reliable data recovery. Next on the list was the desire for easier management.

Firms are beginning to realise that SANs can offer a positive return on investment (ROI), said the author of the report, Hamish Macarthur. "People see the main benefits [of SANs] as consolidation of resources, cost-effective management, increased availability of data resources and better security, while some have found significant cost savings as well."

Jason Phippen, European director of products and solutions marketing at SAN vendor Veritas, said firms are now gaining a better understanding of SANs. "Education in the customer base has got a lot better," he said. "They can consolidate servers and storage, and run clustering over the top, then map their storage applications over those cluster farms."

However, MSI doubts that most IT managers are yet fully aware of the benefits of SAN management tools, and said suppliers must improve the level of support they provide.

The firm estimates that most of the European firms that have deployed SANs have based them on the little-understood Fibre Channel (FC) technology - but new equipment using simpler, cheaper kit based on the iSCSI protocol and better management software is starting to attract smaller firms.

"ISCSI brings SAN fabric to firms that couldn't touch Fibre Channel because of its high costs, while better virtualisation software removes much of the complexity from managing distributed storage systems. It's also a technology that is already well understood in most IT departments," said Russ Johnson, vice president of European sales and marketing for SAN vendor Adaptec.