Thank you for your interest in our Charter Member program at the Data Management Institute (DMI). This program is designed to assist prospective members to become members of the Institute community by subsidizing their first year membership dues in exchange for survey data.

Survey results will be used to help DMI to characterize the storage technology requirements of companies from a consumer/operator perspective. Data of this type ? demand-side data ? of any real quality is in extremely short supply.

We hope to use this data to author an annual report entitled ?A Day in the Life of the Data Manager? that will help to gauge the business value of storage technology being sold to consumers today. Your honest responses will help us to isolate where storage products are meeting, and falling short of meeting, the real world requirements of data managers like you.

All we ask is that you answer all questions honestly and fully. Personal information disclosed as part of this survey will be kept in confidence by DMI and used only to provide qualifying respondents with their DMI community membership credentials.

Responding to this survey does NOT guarantee a Charter Membership in the DMI community. We have a set number of available memberships to award ? 600 in all. Of these, 150 are allocated to representatives of large companies, 300 to medium sized companies, and 150 to small firms. The memberships will be granted to individuals who fully complete our survey provided that available grants of membership are available for the category of company in which the respondent works. First come, first served.

Thank you for your participation.

1. In what size company do you work (pick the answer that best applies):

2. In what industry does your company operate? (Pick the answer that best applies.)

3. Your job function:

If Other :

If Other :

4. What is your official job title?

5. Do you manage staff?

If Yes, How Many? :

6. Define your responsibilities with respect to data storage technology used by
    your firm (pick all that apply)

7. What is your annual salary?

8. Please estimate what percentage of your working day on average is
    dedicated to storage-related activity other than data creation:

If Other :

If none of the above :

9. What are your most common storage-related activities and what percentage
     of the time you dedicate to storage-related work is spent on each activity
     each week? (Please check all that apply, and enter in the percentage of
     time spent)

Other: Please specify additional storage related tasks and the percentage of
           time spent on average performing them on a weekly basis.

10. What do you consider to be your top five storage-related problems?

11. Do you believe you receive salary that is commensurate with the work
      you perform and the skills you require to do your job?

12. Has your organization paid for any storage-related training or skills
      development for you in the past 12 months?

13. Have you paid out of your own pocket for any storage-related training or
      skills development over the last 12 months?

14. If you have received any storage-related training or skills development over
      the past 12 months, was it: (Check all that apply)

15. Do you feel you have all of the knowledge and skills you need to do your job?

16. Do you believe that certification programs in storage-related content areas
      would afford you more recognition as a professional, greater job security,
      better salary, or any other benefits in the context of your current job?

17. Do you believe that the importance of the work you perform for your
      organization and the skills you bring to your job are recognized by
      your managers?

18. Are you given the authority required to undertake the tasks you are
      assigned? (Are your decisions the final word? Are your opinions
      important in decision-making?)

19. Are you concerned that your job will be lost to an outsourcing
      arrangement in the near future?

20. Do you trust your storage technology vendors?

21. Would you describe your storage infrastructure as ?homogeneous?
      (all technology from a single vendor and its partners) or ?heterogeneous?
      (storage technology comes from many vendors)?

22. How much storage capacity do you have?

23. Did your answer to question 22 include storage on desktops, laptops,
      standalone servers, and other platforms outside storage-only systems
      such as arrays?

24. Do your responsibilities cover storage that is internally installed in PCs,
      laptops, and standalone servers?

If Other :

26. If you had to guess, what is the total storage capacity represented by
      internal storage devices in desktop systems, laptops and standalone
      servers in your organization?

27. How quickly is your storage growing in terms of the new capacity that
      you are adding each year?

28. Do you use any storage arrays that are directly attached to servers in
      your organization?

29. If your answer to Question 28 is YES, from what vendor(s) do you
      purchase your server-attached array products? (Write in the names
      of up to five array vendors whose product you use)

30. How are your server-attached array products connected to your servers?

31. Based on your experience with your server-attached storage to date,
      what is your view of the reliability of these devices?

Please Explain Your Answer for Question #31 :

32. Do you use any Network Attached Storage (NAS)?

33. If your answer to Question 32 is YES, from what vendor(s) do you
      purchase your NAS products? (Write in the names of up to five NAS
      vendors whose product you use)

34. What protocol is used to connect your NAS to your servers?

35. Based on your experience with your network-attached storage to date,
      what is your view of the reliability of these devices?

Please Explain Your Answer for Question #35 :

36. Do you use Fibre Channel fabrics (?SANs?) to attach storage with servers?

37. Is your Fibre Channel fabric ?homogeneous? (all storage arrays and
      important switch components come from a single vendor and its suppliers)
      or ?heterogeneous? (the SAN has a mixture of storage arrays and switches,
      all from different vendors)?

38. If you have a Fibre Channel fabric ?SAN,? how would you rate its reliability?

Please Explain Your Answer for Question #38 :

25. Is internal storage described in question 24 included in a data protection
      strategy such as tape backup?

40. Do you have any applications that you believe would be best served
      by a network storage infrastructure? If your answer is yes, please
      identify the application(s).

41. What do you see as a benefit to your organization of placing storage
      in a ?networked topology? such as NAS, Fibre Channel fabric or IP SAN?

If you answered yes to question 40 please explain :

42. How do you currently manage storage?

If Other :

43. From what you have heard or the products you use, how would you
      rank the following storage management software vendors. Enter ?0? if
      you have no information about a vendor or its products, and use 1
      through 5 to describe a vendor as having Very Poor products and
      service (1) or Excellent products and services (5).

AppIQ :

Commvault :

Computer Associates :

CreekPath :

Crosswalk :

IBM Tivoli :

EMC Control Center :

Hewlett Packard :

Softek :

Symantec/Veritas :

Tek-Tools Storage Profiler :

Other :

(Write in a product name and your ranking)

44. In 2004, the Storage Networking Industry Association released version 1.0
      of its Storage Management Initiative ? Specification (SMI-S). Have you heard
      of SMI-S and what its purpose may be?

39. Are you considering networking storage using TCP/IP protocols such as iSCSI?

46. How important is manageability as a criterion in your selection of
      storage hardware products? Please rank the 10 selection criteria
      below, including manageability, in order of importance to you, with
      ?1? being most important and ?10? being least important.

Brand name and pedigree/tenure of vendor :

?Value-Add? Features :

Manageability :

Cost :

Security :

Capacity :

Speed :

Connectivity :

Availability :

Other: (Specify) :

47. How do you protect your data today?

48. If you use tape backup, what, if any, are your key concerns?

If Other :

49. If you use disk to disk mirroring, what, if any, are your key concerns?

50. Has your company developed a disaster recovery plan and has it been
      tested in the last six months?

51. Considerable money is now being spent within the storage industry to
      promote information (or data) lifecycle management solutions, especially
      to enhance regulatory compliance. In your view, are these products useful?

52. Analysts vary in their estimates of storage cost to organizations. As
      a component of your overall IT hardware budget -- including servers,
      network equipment, desktop computing, and wire and cabling expense
      ? would you estimate that storage components are

53. How are storage acquisitions made at your company?

54. What analyst groups do you currently reference to help guide your storage acquisitions? List up to three in order of importance to you.

If Other :

45. In general, do you believe that hardware vendors who now offer
      storage management software have a better value proposition than
      independent software vendors who sell no hardware?

58. Have you ever purchased used gear?

59. What do you see as the key drawbacks to buying used storage hardware?

60. What one thing would you like to see the storage industry correct or
      enhance with respect to storage technology today?

FINAL SECTION: Respondent Information

Note: This information will be held in strict confidence and will absolutely not be shared with anyone outside Toigo Partners International.

YOUR NAME:

YOUR COMPANY NAME:

YOUR ADDRESS:





YOUR PHONE:

YOUR EMAIL:

If you are selected for our Charter Membership program, you will be notified shortly (usually within 48 hours) at the email address you have provided above. Please let us know your preferences with respect to the following:

YOUR MEMBER LOGIN:

YOUR PASSWORD:

A PASSWORD REMINDER:

Finally, we may be following up by phone with a small number of respondents to this survey in order to obtain ANONYMOUS quotes for publication in our Day in the Life of the Data Manager Report. May we contact you by phone or email with a follow-up call if your name is chosen?




Thank you again for your interest and for completing this questionnaire. We will send all respondents a copy of the final report when it is published.

57. Do you normally buy or lease equipment?

If Both :

55. Do you use techniques such as Return on Investment, Total Cost of Ownership,
      or Payback Analysis to justify your storage technology acquisitions?

56. How long do you normally retain your storage hardware?