Listen to the column Storage Survey, or visit our Podcast Center to hear more by James Gaskin.

HP just paid for a survey of 1,200 mid-sized firms with between 100 and 1,000 employees spread across seven countries. According to the executive summary, respondents want to improve customer satisfaction (86 percent) and improve product quality (81 percent). How storage can do that, I don't know, but companies also worry about business continuity, upgrading servers, and price. But the details between countries in the survey surprised me.

Companies in the UK listed business continuity as an IT strategic priority 100 percent of the time, and Germans listed it 96 percent of the time (US companies 46 percent).

Server consolidation as an influence on storage purchases got mentioned 69 percent of the time for US companies, but only 37 percent of the time for the Japanese. Are we ahead of the consolidation curve, or just suckers for good salespeople?

Indian companies rated moving from DAS to SAN as a purchase influence 38 percent of the time, compared to the US at 22 percent, and the Germans at 17 percent. Have US companies embraced SANs earlier and more enthusiastically than the rest of the world? That makes sense to me.

Everyone knows the Chinese are growing like spring weeds, but they are also the most cautious. 79 percent of Chinese companies mentioned the warranty as a strong purchase influence, followed by the UK at 67 percent. We in the US cared the least with only 28 percent.

The old clich

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