The contrast was more marked when users were asked how they addressed storage complexity issues. Of 251 respondents, 56 percent said they implemented new and better storage resource management and storage-area network (SAN) management tools. Trailing far behind were implementing new virtualization technology, with 15 percent of the responses; outsourcing at 8 percent and hiring more technical support staff at 7 percent. Fourteen percent of respondents said storage complexity was not an issue at their company.

The numbers show a dramatic preference for storage resource management tools when compared with results of the poll at the April conference, where 36 percent of respondents said they used storage resource management and SAN management tools to address complexity issues and 23 percent said they implemented storage automation or workflow processes.