COMPAQ: Riding the SAN Storm

IF you thought the Indian storage market was yet to take off,

you need to think again. And whoever said the Indian CIO might not invest in a

technology like storage area network (SAN), is in for a surprise. The need to

manage and optimally utilize the information overload that has been happening

over the last few years is driving the storage market by leaps and bounds.

According to IDC India, the market, valued at $130 million in

2000, is expected to grow 75% this year. And Compaq has been among the first to

ride on this wave. "SAN solutions started picking up in India early last

year. Just to give you a feeling of the kind of spurt Compaq has seen, our

network storage business for the year 2000 has grown more than four times over

that in 1999," says Owais Khan, business manager, enterprise storage,

Compaq India.

The company, which was traditionally known as a desktop

vendor, is now actively getting into storage and services, pursuing its aim to

become an end-to-end solution provider. Being among the early players to tap the

potential of network storage in the country, it has managed to bag contracts for

almost 200 SAN implementations in the last 16-18 months. Its focus on SANs paid

dividends as IDC’s latest India Storage report for the year 2000 ranked it as

India’s No 1 company in external disk storage systems with a 31.6% market

share.

Compaq’s nearest competitors in the external disk storage

market in the country include HP with 20.5% marketshare, Sun Micro—stystems at

19.5%, IBM at 12% and Network Appliance at 11%. While players like EMC and IBM

are considered global leaders in this segment, they have been relatively slow to

penetrate the Indian market. In the overall storage market, of the 1,040

terabytes shipped in the country, Compaq leads with a 37% share. According to

Mark Lewis, VP, enterprise storage group, Compaq, "India forms an important

part of the Asia-Pacific market, contributing 10% to our business from this

region. Networked storage as a concept has just started picking up here; so it

will continue to grow."

"The enterprise storage space is currently going through

significant redefinition in terms of what customers are buying," says Roger

Cox, chief analyst at Gartner. "Recent Gartner worldwide research projects

that SAN-based storage will grow from just 16.3% of the total multi-user storage

market in 2000 to 70.7% in 2005. The much more restrictive direct attached

storage (DAS) paradigm, where storage is directly attached to a server, is

rapidly being displaced by the more flexible and cost-effective SAN paradigm.

Companies that maintain clear leadership in the SAN arena will end up dominating

the entire storage market."

Verticals in focus

Apart from focusing on the traditional storage users such as

manufacturing and finance companies, Compaq also gained significantly by tapping

the telecom and IT sectors. Of the total storage business, while the share of

manufacturing, finance and telecom ranged between 15-20%, other sectors such as

government, software and Web-related businesses also contributed a significant

8-10%.

Investment from the financial sector came from banks such as

HDFC and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) that ramped up its storage

infrastructure in a big way. The IT and telecom sector included a range of

service providers such as application service providers, Internet service

providers, Internet data centers, and call centers among others. These

application areas generate large volumes of data that require backup and storage

with high availability and data integrity. Moreover, as these businesses are

still in the process of getting established, the urgency to invest in technology

to achieve faster turnarounds is far greater. On the other hand, the traditional

enterprise sector will take a relatively cautious and slower approach.

Indian companies that are implementing network storage

reiterate its increasing need and criticality for their businesses. RP Rath,

manager, technology, Spectramind eServices, says, "In spite of the

slowdown, the outsourcing business has not been hit so far. We have been getting

business from the US, and there is an urgency for faster implementation. A

technology like SAN can certainly help improve our services and manage the large

volumes of data." Koushik RN, computer and communications division, Infosys

is also all for SAN: "Enterprise customers have a lot of data, which needs

to be accessed at various stages. With more and more organizations automating

their processes, this data is only increasing in volumes. SAN is a good solution

at per MB cost, and will pick up in India."

CIO concerns

In order to move at Internet speed, organizations want to

develop and implement business applications quickly. This requires that IT

resources be deployed and re-deployed on short notice. A networked,

storage-centric infrastructure makes this possible. However, the complexity of

storage environments is increasing rapidly, and IT staffs are not growing

storage management skills and expertise at the same rate. Also, many companies

have storage systems from multiple vendors that need to be included in the

storage network, and they must be managed using a single interface and

management model for reliable data access in a heterogeneous, networked storage

environment.

In such a scenario, buyers not only have to address basic

questions such as ‘choosing between SAN or NAS’ or ‘How and when to invest’,

but also have to take care of the rapid changes and interoperability issues that

arise with any implementation. As Rath puts it, "How do we ensure that we

get value for money? Is this the right time to invest in SAN since there is an

absence of standardization and maturity? In the business of contact centers, we

have to cater to multiple customers with varied requirements, and so we can’t

stick to a single tvendor. We need a solution that provides ease of

manageability, without creating a mix-up between multiple operating

environments."

"Compaq’s strategy for the network storage market is

based on both SAN and NAS, though for reasons of business and technical

superiority, what sells more is SAN. Our SAN solutions for storage consolidation

support almost all Intel-based operating systems and five major RISC/Unix

operating platforms," says Khan. This means that Compaq solutions support

Intel-based Windows 2000 and NT, Novell NetWare, SCO Unix, Linux, Alpha servers

running Tru64 Unix or OpenVMS, Sun Solaris, HP/UX, IBM AIX, and SGI Irix

servers, among others. The solutions include fiber channel storage hubs and

switches, appropriate interconnects, management and high-availability software,

apart from disk- as well tape-based storage systems.

What’s in store?

To address the growing storage requirements and provide a

network architecture that is effective, streamlined and suited for e-business,

consolidation of storage is becoming increasingly important. SAN-wide storage

virtualization is a possible solution to meet such challenges. The Gartner Group

describes two methods for implementing SAN-wide storage virtualization. One is

labeled symmetrical pooling and is characterized by inserting the storage

abstraction layer in the SAN data path between host servers and storage devices.

The other one is asymmetrical pooling and works by locating the storage

abstraction control function to the side of the SAN so that it is not directly

in the data path.

Compaq’s VersaStor technology is based on the asymmetrical

pooling model. Advantages of the asymmetrical model over the symmetrical model

include elimination of the virtualization box as a single point of failure,

unlimited bandwidth scalability, no inherent latency introduced into the data

path, and the ability to scale the capacity of the storage pool without limit.

"This technology erases the boundaries between heterogeneous storage

devices and allows different storage devices to be combined into a SAN-attached

storage pool that is simple to manage as a single resource. It also simplifies

large-scale open SAN deployment and increases flexibility in tailoring the

storage environment," explains Khan. Examples of virtual disk attributes

include capacity, RAID protection level, server visibility, storage pool

hierarchy location, performance characteristics, etc.

A VersaStor storage pool can grow or shrink dynamically and

transparently and promises server-independent, transparent data migration.

However, the technology needs further simplification and more importantly,

reduction in costs for wider adoption.

Outlook

Compaq has been among the early takers of the storage

bandwagon in India, especially in the SAN domain. HP and Network Appliance are

some of the other players that have been active on the front. But bigwigs like

IBM and EMC, with their traditional strengths and global standing, have also

tightened their belts now. India has huge untapped potential, which attracts

them all. The storage market is heating up and a lot of action is expected in

the coming months. Compaq might have gained advantage by being the early mover,

but sustaining that position needs a smart strategy to tackle all the

competition that’s in store.

SHWETA VERMA in Bangkok

‘Network storage will continue to dominate’

Mark Lewis, V-P and general manager, enterprise storage group, Compaq

Computer

An architect of Compaq’s strategy for the delivery of open SANs, Mark Lewis

is recognized for his role in the evolution of enterprise storage. He holds

seven patents relating to storage products. Lewis joined Digital Equipment in

1984, where he led efforts to develop the StorageWorks line and launched new

ventures. Excerpts from an interview with DQ:

Compaq has traditionally been known as a desktop company.

And now it is gradually moving into other areas such as storage and services…

Yes, there’s no doubt that Compaq has evolved from being a

PC company. It began specifically with the acquisition of Digital. That’s

where our storage business came from. Now, we are laying emphasis on improving

our services skills and looking at potential acquisitions in that area. The idea

is to move a step up– from being just a products company to becoming a

solutions provider. This could range from storage products and utilities

 to solutions for the telecom or the healthcare market.

How is the Indian market placed in your Asia-Pacific

scheme of things for the storage business?

India accounts for about 10% of our APAC storage business,

and the market is growing phenomenally. Countries like Singapore and Australia

are already quite developed in terms of IT. Now India, along with China and

Korea, is really starting to mature, so we’ll see a lot of growth here.>

But SAN, in its present form, seems too expensive to

result in mass deployment. It might remain restricted to larger firms…

SAN prices have come down and become more cost-effective in

the last few months. We do expect costs to continue to decline. We are also

offering business-class or entry-level SANs, which will allow small- and

medium-sized companies to go for network storage without investing too much.

While the initial deployments have been with very large-sized enterprises, like

the Fortune 100 companies, now more and more smaller companies are taking

interest in this technology.

And how do you deal with the present complexities in terms

of technology and architecture?

Even if the back-end network storage technology is complex,

the goal in general is to make it easy for customers to use. The kind of analogy

used here is the Jet airplane. The passenger is fairly comfortable even though

the plane system is quite complex. We might have to add more hardware,

networking and management software, but the idea is to make life easier for the

end-user.

In what ways can the smaller enterprises gain from this

technology?

I think there are 2-3 ways in which SMEs can take advantage

of network storage. One is to utilize NAS, which can be a good solution for

smaller organizations. We are evolving the technology to give them the same

block-level SAN performance on an IP network, so they may not need a second

network. Another way they can take advantage is to not deploy the IP resources

themselves, but use a service provider instead. Once the service provider has

10-20 customers, he can go for a SAN and share it across his clients.

Among your Indian customers, a majority seem to be from

the service providers industry such as call centers, data centers, etc. Was this

segment specifically targeted?

No, I think it just happened. Service providers have been

very keen on storage, and on understanding how their business models can be

built around storage utilities. But if you look at our overall customer base,

you’ll find finance and telecom to be the two largest vertical segments.

What are the other vertical segments that you are

targeting?

Healthcare and sciences are two verticals on which we are

significantly focussed, apart from government, which has very specific

requirements, and the retail industry, which has large customer databases to

manage. And the biggest new market for storage is media and entertainment, where

digitization of information is becoming very critical. Instead of video tapes,

TV programs can be stored on disk drives and played from there. Apart from

better storage, this will also be effective in terms of cost and performance.

But this sector hasn’t really picked up till now in

India... and even the level of IT maturity in the sector would be low…

Yes, this industry has tried to use digital storage in the

past but it hasn’t really taken off because of a few reasons. One, the

technology was too complex, and people in the broadcast industry not being IT

professionals need a much simpler technology. Second, the cost of digital

storage was too high. We have already reduced the cost to an extent. So,

simplification of technology is what we are looking at now.

How do you position yourself vis-à-vis your global

competitors like IBM and EMC?

IBM is a strong service organization and is definitely a very

credible supplier. But we are trying to move faster in terms of adopting newer

technology. EMC has been a global leader in storage, but its consolidation took

place at a time when there was a boom and companies were not as worried about

costs. But as the economy gets tougher and we provide the same functionality at

half the price, customers will soon realize the benefits. Indian customers, in

particular, are more cost conscious.

Any specific initiative or strategy to further drive your

storage business?

Apart from investing in core technology, we are very focussed

on skilled resources and alliances. We depend a lot on our partners and choose

those who can add value to our business. We are also focussed on local teams and

local solution centers helping the individual market needs. While driving the

core technology in North America, we can’t expect to figure out the marketing

program or specific strategy for every country, like whether we should emphasize

NAS or entry-level SAN for India. So, we let the individual country teams decide

what products are right for their markets.

How do you compare India with other Asian countries like

China in terms of the level of development and adoption of IT?

Well, looking at the use of technology, India is not far

behind. The bigger companies can always afford to adopt the latest technology,

though the overall scale of use might differ. For instance, in some countries,

there is a higher use of NAS, while SAN would be more popular elsewhere. But

that’s okay because while we offer high-end solutions, we can also provide cost-effective solutions. What we expect in both India and China is that

the uptake of technology will be very fast, so there’s not going to be a lot

of difference.

SHWETA VERMA in Bangkok