While New Zealand may be a small market in terms of numbers, our bold business approach makes us a key indicator of where the IT industry could be headed in the future, according to CommVault APJ product manager, Paul McClure.

The comments come as CommVault announces the results of its annual virtualisation survey, saying that worldwide, 34% of businesses have virtualised three quarters or more of their server environments.

The figure is lower for New Zealand, at 27%, but McClure says this is no indication the market here is slower than those overseas.

"This is a really important market for us,” McClure says, "and it’s growing quite considerably.

"I’m in Japan a lot and I often get asked by the Japanese what people are doing in New Zealand.”

McClure says the reason is cultural, with the country’s geographic isolation demanding innovation from its businesses.

"It may be a smaller in terms of the total addressable market, but businesses here are nimble, and tend to be early adopters.”

McClure says in addition to courting new clients, a big part of his role is meeting with existing clients to review CommVault’s products and collect feedback to deliver to the company’s corporate headquarters.

New Zealand is also an important place for this reason also, McClure says, as many cultures in the Asia-Pacific region are reluctant to provide constructive criticism as it is perceived as negative.

Of the market in general, McClure says the data management industry is perfectly placed to take advantage of continued technological growth.

"Data is exploding,” McClure says.

"It’s a problem that keeps compounding, and technologies that solve that problem will keep becoming more relevant.”