At the turn of the century, large data centers still relied mostly on direct-attached storage systems, which offer abysmal data utilization rates -- 25% to 30% of hard drive capacity. Since then, many enterprise IT managers have at least begun to study technologies that could vastly improve data utilization, like Fibre Channel, IP storage-area networks, thin provisioning and virtualization. A recent survey by TheInfoPro found that almost half of Fortune 1,000 companies now use thin provisioning or plan to do so. Slumberland Inc has seen a significant improvement in data utilization since adopting the technology in 2004, said Seth Mitchell, an infrastructure team manager at the furniture retailer.
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