The data storage industry is one of the most dynamic sectors in
information technology today. Largely, due to the introduction of
high-performance networking between servers and storage assets, storage
technology has undergone a rapid transformation as one innovation after another
has pushed storage solutions forward. At the same time, the viability of new
storage technologies is repeatedly affirmed by the rapid adoption of networked
storage virtually by every large enterprise and institution. Businesses,
governments, and institutions today depend on information, and information in
its unrefined form as data ultimately resides somewhere on storage media.
Milestones
The evolution of the storage industry can be divided in terms of three major
milestones. It originated with the mainframe, which was a gigantic computer that
could run all the programs in a large business. All the computer stuff was
gathered in one place called a datacenter. All the storage that the mainframe
needs was directly connected to it.
The PC revolution helped data to spread out and was moved off
the mainframe and stored in server computers in the 80's. The servers were
then dispersed throughout the enterprise to bring computing power closer to the
actual users. This came to be known in the industry as DAS where the hardware is
connected to an individual server.
Post DAS, storage moved to the next level in the early 90s with
a network or LAN connected servers. A great deal of data was scattered, and
managing all the data dispersed throughout the network became a nightmare. This
saw the advent of SAN in the mid-nineties. NAS, a variation of SAN, came into
the picture in early 2000. Today 70-75 percent of the storage market is ruled by
SAN or NAS or variation of the two.
Since the early 90s, storage innovation has produced a steady
stream of new technology solutions, including fibre channel, network-attached
storage (NAS), server clustering, serverless back-up, high-availability dual-pathing,
point-in-time data copy (snapshots), shared tape access, storage over distance,
iSCSI, CIM (common information model)-based management of storage assets and
transports, and storage virtualization.
A Growing Market
Today, storage requirements are driving increasing volumes of data, a
growing understanding that all data needs to be protected and most importantly,
compliance. According to industry sources, while data is growing at around 50-60
percent globally, this data is growing at the pace of 80-100 percent YoY in
India.
Last year, the external storage market grew by 39 percent while
storage software grew by 38 percent. The overall network storage market grew at
a phenomenal pace of 85 percent while DAS registered a negative growth of 18
percent. The SAN market grew at 90 percent while NAS grew at 68 percent in FY
2005-06. According to IDC, FY 2005-06 storage hardware revenue in India grows
from $231 million to $279 million.
Last year, an interesting trend that picked up was the adoption
of Fiber Channel (FC) SAN in the enterprise considered to be expensive hitherto.
More than 90 percent of the SAN deployments in enterprise storage for block
level storage access requirements were in the FC category.
Secondary storage grew at a more conservative pace of 11
percent. Said Jim Simon, Marketing Director-APAC, Quantum, "Enhancements
in tape has kept pace with the dynamically evolving storage requirements in the
enterprise." Tapes can enjoy a lifespan of up to 30 years as compared to an
optical disk which can depreciate in quality in about five years time. Huge
demand in tapes as storage devices in India can be assessed from the 8.1 percent
CAGR growth over six years according to IDC. Storage software kept pace with
external storage market to grow at 38 percent.
Vendor Landscape
Some of the key players in the market in external storage include big names
like HP, IBM, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, Network Appliances, among others.Today,
even storage players like NetApp and EMC have started providing services around
storage.
PK Gupta, Director- Product Marketing, APJ and Korea, EMC, said, "Third
party players are also active in the services around storage segment."
The secondary storage market in India is driven primarily by HP,
IBM and Quantum. Sun Microsystems post its acquisition of StorageTek, also
entered in to this space. Players like Quantum have introduced DLT-V4 drive for
preventive and predictive diagnostic manageability.
Finally, as storage consolidation gains momentum, storage
virtualization is seeing adoption in large enterprises. While enterprises are
adopting storage virtualization at the SAN level, SMB where the trend is far
less significant has been adopting storage virtualization at the server level.
Bhaswati Chakravorty
bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in