Staffing woes are being addressed primarily in two ways: outsourcing and training. Nearly half of the companies are outsourcing at least some of their data center tasks to save money and give staff time to focus on other priorities. Training is taking on an increasingly strategic performance, with 78% of Symantec's respondents saying training budgets will rise or at least stay level in the next two years.

Economic turmoil is already forcing many companies to institute IT hiring freezes, and this is forcing IT pros to take on extra responsibilities that go beyond their usual job descriptions, as Network World reported in October. 

Virtualization initiatives have brought money savings, with average server utilization rates now at 53%, the Symantec report found.

"It is much improved. I'd say five years ago the average was probably 20%," Ward says. But servers are still underutilized, leaving room for more cost savings. (Compare server products.)

Symantec also examined the state of disaster-recovery planning, and found good and bad news. Nearly two-thirds of companies report having average, pretty good or excellent disaster-recovery plans for their data centers. The remaining 36% say their disaster-recovery plans either need work or are undocumented, which Ward believes is a high proportion considering that the survey targeting only companies with at least 5,000 employees. "These aren't small companies," he says.