Attune Systems, Inc., a provider of enterprise-class file virtualization solutions, today announced the results of a Taneja Group research study on next-generation file management. The objective of the study was to understand end-users’ current unstructured data environments, their operational challenges, their future purchasing intentions, and their perception around next-generation file management technologies. The research spanned a wide cross-section of industries, sizes of companies, as well as different IT job titles. As part of the research, the analyst firm surveyed 238 IT users in the following industries: financial services (21%), manufacturing (15%), government (14%), healthcare (10%), professional services (10%), telecommunications (6%), education (6%), retail/wholesale (3%), and others (15%).

Taneja Group identified three categories of customer benefits that would result from implementing next-generation file management solutions: centralized management and security, highly available data access and data protection, as well as cost reduction and optimization. The analyst firm predicts that “the need to consolidate and centralize controls over unstructured data will shape the evolution of the storage industry and drive significant innovation for the foreseeable future.” The study declared unstructured data as the largest component of deployed storage capacity, growing at an impressive rate, and resulting in significant operational challenges for end-users. 53% of users surveyed by the Taneja Group indicated that they had 11 TB or more of unstructured data in their environment while 62% of users reported that their unstructured information was growing between 16% and 75% per year. Respondents said that the major drivers of unstructured data growth were Microsoft Office (78%), email attachments (66%), and backup and archival (81%).

“Our research indicates that end users rely heavily on the use of Microsoft products and technologies to create, store, and share unstructured content,” said Steve Norall, senior analyst with Taneja Group. "As a result, file management and controls technologies must seamlessly interoperate with Windows platforms in order to allow users to centrally impose security and management controls over an enterprise’s file-based data assets.”

Attune Systems is a Microsoft OEM partner. The Windows-based file virtualization solution from Attune Systems is composed on off-the-shelf hardware and seven core technologies that deliver its leading-edge file virtualization capabilities: Maestro Policy IQ™, Dual Path Access™, Adaptable Mirroring™, Volume Sets™, Dynamic Volume Expansion™, Small File Acceleration™, and Remote Scripting Engine™. The Attune file virtualization natively supports and leverages numerous other Microsoft technologies such as Common Internet File System (CIFS), Server Message Blocks (SMB), Microsoft Cluster Server, Microsoft Active Directory, Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), Opportunistic Locking (OpLocks), and Microsoft Domain Controller.