Infrastructure and operations (I&O) executives and their engineering teams often ask Forrester for technology adoption data to understand which new innovations their peers have adopted to manage fast growing data while delivering high performance for virtualization and application workloads. This benchmarks report highlights the following storage infrastructure data: 1) the drivers of data growth; 2) the state of storage budgets; 3) the adoption of flash-based storage; 4) the interest in object storage; and 5) the state of storage outsourcing. The data in this report is powered by Forrester's Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2013, fielded to 2,306 hardware decision-makers in Europe and North America. I&O executives should use this data — along with Forrester's IT infrastructure playbook — to discover, plan, act, and optimize storage infrastructures.