/dq/media/agency_attachments/UPxQAOdkwhCk8EYzqyvs.png)
Follow UsOne man’s misery is another’s euphoria–and the maxim proved to hit bull’s
eye with the storage segment in fiscal 2001-02.
While most of the Indian IT industry reeled under the bludgeoning impact of
the slowdown and 9.11, these very events created a cascading demand for the
storage segment. If there was one segment other than IT-enabled services that
spent the year notching up strong growth, it was storage.
But fiscal 2001-02 was unique, in that while it saw storage requirements
expanding on the one hand, it saw IT budgets being squeezed on the other. So it
was that while volumes jumped by a heady 70% (DQ estimates) for storage players,
values were down 5% (DQ estimates), primarily due to crashing component costs.
|
/dq/media/post_attachments/50385d7a8a1775b10a1107bce2c6fbd2af0bc26bcdb9646f8f2cd75f6d83202b.gif){kind=small}
The slowdown meant that average sales cycles became longer and in certain
cases, it was more than six to eight months, or even more. There were also some
cases where prospective deals didn’t close even after a year of follow-ups.
Though storage requirements persists, IT budgets are tight in these scenarios.
SAN up, but DAS dominates
Direct attached storage (DAS) dominated the Indian storage market with a 74%
marketshare. SAN (storage area network) and NAS (network attached storage)
together accounted for 16% and 10% of the marketshare, respectively.
The reluctance exhibited by enterprises to move beyond DAS were two-fold–costs
and implementation time for enterprise network storage solutions, besides lack
of awareness and RoI pressures. As the cost of hardware components and time of
implementation go down, more enterprises are set to go in for storage solutions.
Another reason for slow deployment of storage solutions remained lack of
critical mass for comparative evaluation.
The total storage hardware market in 2001-02 stood at Rs 605.15 crore (DQ
estimates), a 5% drop over the previous year.
|
/dq/media/post_attachments/8b62a2a17a3b6283013bd4ebacb488a7d1c7b298d46371faa32a3c26128ebe86.jpg)
This was mainly due to a significant reduction in component prices. According
to IDC, HP-Compaq at 63%, accounted for the top marketshare in the storage
hardware space, followed by IBM with 13% and Network appliances-6.7%
Fiscal 2001-02 witnessed an increase in the requirement for specialised
back-up solutions like LAN-free, SAN and zero-downtime back-ups in large
organizations, and enhanced back-ups in the SME space. Incidents such as 9.11
and the Gujarat quake only made organizations realize the need for a
comprehensive disaster recovery plan, of which storage was a critical component.
From being just something that people looked at as a back-end implementation,
storage ended the year assuming a significant level of importance, an issue at
the core of most enterprise business strategies.
Data consolidation emerged as a key issue, leading to a simpler disaster
recovery and business continuity plan. Other key storage terminologies that
became hot buzzwords were ‘data archiving’ and ‘hierarchical storage
management’. The key drivers for this were the still high cost of disks, far
more expensive than tape drives.
The long-term picture for the enterprise storage industry remains positive.
The dynamics are shifting to server-agnostic enterprise storage, both SAN and
NAS. It will be important for storage solution providers to initiate RoI and TCO
calculation for the overall requirement and explain the accruing benefits to
customers, which will help them convince their management to take strong
measures before it is too late.
Storage software: Up, up, up…
Computer storage needs have evolved from simply backing up on a tape to
pulling data from multiple heterogeneous environments across the enterprise and
managing these functions from a central point. This necessitated the need for
automatic monitoring tools that could not only check the health of the storage
solution, but also allow all hosts in a storage environment to communicate with
each other.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
All this and the need to have ‘anytime, anywhere’ data access made
managing storage solutions a continuing headache for enterprises. Also, with the
slowdown squeezing budgets, CIOs were under pressure to realize higher RoI.
Till recently, external storage was only about hardware, but now, a dramatic
shift toward designing and building storage architectures is visible, apart from
widespread adoption of storage software, considered key to realize maximum
business value and returns on investment. With a lot already happening in
storage hardware, storage software also witnessed few vendors establishing or
augmenting marketing activities in India. Besides established players like
Computer Associates, others are beginning to map India within their operations.
While vendors like Brocade established their presence in India, Veritas set
up its marketing bureau. The storage software market is valued at Rs 73.5 crore,
a growth of 70% over previous year. In late 2001, virtualization emerged as a
buzzword as most vendors announced their plans and unveiled management software
strategies. Virtualizing at the fabric and router levels are players like HP-
Compaq and Brocade. Veritas moved virtualization into the fabric level for both
NAS and SAN from the host level. Players at the host or server-based levels are
Sun, CA, IMB, EMC, Compaq and HP. Virtualization is expected to realize the full
potential of SAN and NAS environments.
There are only a few vendors offering solutions for a NAS environ. For the
SMEs’ s, virtualization in a NAS environment is possible but not for DAS.
Storage virtualization is expected to reach India in another two years. Demand
for storage management software is likely to be boosted by a drop in prices for
storage devices, which is expected to stimulate the purchasing cycle. Also,
large enterprises are expected to improve business processes by investing in
enterprise applications that will encourage demand for storage devices and
storage management software.
While vendors are focussing extensively on the high potential financial
services and telecom markets, e-government initiatives are also expected to act
as catalysts. Enterprise storage solutions are generally more complex and
extensive and are used by large and medium organizations. On the other hand,
smaller organizations still continue to use relatively cheaper options like
workgroup storage products from CA and Veritas.
Bluefin technology emerged from a league of major storage players who
collaborated on specs for open standards that could fuel the interoperability
movement. The Bluefin technology standard was developed from application
programming interfaces (APIs) and management tools developed by VERITAS Software
and other SNIA member companies.
Value from LMEs, volumes from SMEs
There seems to be a direct correlation between industry segments undergoing
deregulation and their storage requirements.
|
/dq/media/post_attachments/89c163844755cd348dcb8102915dbefec000dc596d3f9db81f8c8f207dc49929.jpg)
While the banking and insurance, telecom and energy segments are witnessing
an exponential increase in storage requirements, they are shifting to a network
storage environment, especially SAN. HP bagged the SAN implementation project at
BPCL and provided a disaster recovery solution to NIIT. Telecom companies,
banks, software development houses, large manufacturing firms and government
departments show the maximum potential to shift to SAN.
CA implemented solutions on clients spanning verticals like HDFC Bank,
Corporation Bank, Standard Chartered, CanBank, C-Dot, Spectramind and GE Capital
Services. Both the LME and SME segments are potential users of storage. While
the SME segment is expected to drive volumes, large enterprises are going to
make large value purchases, as they ramp up their networks.
As the SME segment moves up the value chain in terms of intelligent use of
information, they will be forced to consider the use of intelligent enterprise
storage. Larger IT-savvy organizations are expected to consolidate their
requirements and implement business continuity plans. Key trends for the
recovery market beyond 2002 will include price falls in storage devices, which
is expected to boost purchase cycles and trigger demand for storage management
software. In addition, large enterprises improving their business processes by
investing in enterprise apps will encourage demand for storage devices and
storage management software. Poor awareness, high perceived cost, poor RoI
models and extended sales cycles are possible inhibitors. Another shift is
expected toward inter-operability, especially in technologies such as storage
area networks, and vendors like Veritas, Legato, EMC, IBM, CA and HP are
striving to achieve a manageable storage system.
|
|||||||||||
With an explosion in the amount of digital information, the need for storage
capacity has surged. Resultantly, the industry has been searching for the right
paradigm to take storage from a dedicated, direct attached state (where storage
space is not shared and unmanaged) into a networked state (where all storage
resources on the network are available for use by all host computers). Storage
management is experiencing very high growth rates in India, primarily due to a
lower base on account of its nascent market. India has considerable expertise in
managing, implementing and supporting such storage solutions. Coupled with
declining hardware and software costs, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is
reduced as a result of this.
The storage service provider (SSP) model is also expected to take off as
enterprises realize the importance of data management without increasing their
in-house IT headcount. Currently, the main impediment is mindset and security
concerns.
The fact that vendors who were earlier represented by channel partners are
now directly present in the local market indicates that they are taking this
market very seriously, realizing its future potential.
Storage Solutions: The Pull Factor
Enterprises are becoming acutely aware of what information can do to their
businesses and are looking for solutions to address their storage needs. The
target—to emerge as a zero-latency organization–one that enables free and
immediate exchange of information
The drivers
The main factor driving the storage market is the need to consolidate data
storage across fragmented storage in various servers, reducing the total cost of
ownership of storage. There is also a need to safeguard data in the most
effective manner without compromising on data integrity.
Several other factors are also driving the adoption of network storage, be it
SAN or NAS. Enterprises are concurrently running resource hungry, data intensive
and data generating applications such as CRM and ERP, which need to be accessed
by a range of users. Storage solutions that are network dependant are therefore
required. The Network storage market is also being driven by the need to scale
storage infrastructure easily without adding staff, and the need to reposition
existing resources to take advantage of cost savings in hardware and existing
expertise. Also, the increasing adoption of network standards such as TCP/IP,
NFS and CIFS has contributed to the growth of the network storage market.
Corporate information has become a key competitive factor, and more and more
organizations are looking for ways to access and protect it more efficiently.
Applying a networking model to storage environments (Storage area networks) has
become a strategic necessity
As SAN is about true interoperability, connecting any processor with any
storage device regardless of manufacturer customers are looking towards
implementation of Open-Ended Storage Systems. Currently, Fiber Channel
technology is the basic standard for SAN -interconnectivity and most of the
storage devices support Fiber channel interfaces and are SAN ready.
Another important trend in storage networking is implementation of IP Based
storage networking using iSCSI as the technology that allows SCSI protocols over
high speed IP Networks. Since using iSCSI will also overcome the limitation of
Fiber channel of not providing direct means for connecting remote sites beyond a
distance of 10km, we would soon see organizations implementing enterprise wide
SAN s’ using a combination of Fiber channel as well as iSCSI.
The inhibitors
There are no major inhibitors for storage. Storage worldwide and in India is
being seen as the hottest technology business, the one least affected by the
slow-down and the one that will be the fastest to recover from the US slowdown
and the general softening of business sentiment in India of late. So, the growth
continues in Storage, albeit at a slightly slower pace than it was witnessed
last year.
The only issue that one faces is that there is still much lesser appreciation
of the most important piece in the IT (indeed, business) puzzle around the World
(including India, of course) and that is Storage. After all, if you are a CIO or
IT director or IT manager of any Corporation, what is it that is most important
among all the things that you hold in your custody for the Corporation? Is it
the servers? Is it the desktops? Laptops? Or Data?
Obviously, the answer is data. And where does the data reside? Storage, of
course.