While the Indian enterprise storage market has largely been limited to disk-based storage, corporate India is now moving toward network-based storage such as SAN and NAS. Tape-based storage is becoming high-tech with a move to high-speed automated tape storage. But growth is still down from last year, says Akhtar Pasha

Storage: Top Trends

• Gartner estimates total Indian storage market at Rs 2,000 crore in 2003. IDC estimates storage market will grow at 8 percent in 2002 growth down from last year.
• SAN and NAS to see very high growth. Gartner says SAN will account for 49 percent and NAS for 32 percent of storage revenue pie in India by 2005.
• IDC says need for storage will triple by 2003.
• Need for disaster management solutions among Indian corporates will be key driver for storage market.
• Storage consultancy market to witness massive growth.
• Tape-based storage market to grow by 20 percent.

The storage market in India was chugging along like a runaway train growing at 25 to 30 percent in revenues year-over-year till 2000. 2001 saw it hitting the brakes. Industry pundits estimate that growth in the storage market in 2001 was between 6 and 8 percent. IDC estimates that the storage market will grow by 8 percent in 2002. Gartner estimates the total market for storage in India at Rs 2,000 crore in 2003. Vendors are betting on storage consolidation, hoping that SAN (Storage Area Networks), NAS (Network Attached Storage), DR (disaster recovery) and business continuance solutions will save the day. The importance of the latter has sharply increased after the events of 9/11.

SAN and NAS High growth areas

While enterprise storage has been limited to DAS (Direct Attached Storage), companies are beginning to consider NAS and SAN solutions. Gartner estimates that SAN will account for 49 percent and NAS for 32 percent of the storage revenue pie in India by 2005. “SAN and NAS are growing at roughly 70 percent year-on-year,” says Owais Khan, business manager-storage products, Compaq India. The company has undertaken a couple of big SAN implementations in segments like banking.

SANs provide a storage infrastructure that support server clustering or multi-server data access for databases and transaction systems in a campus environment. They are also being used for local area network-free backups. SAN solutions can be deployed starting from data of

1 TB onwards with 10 servers. But products like EMC’s AutoIS can work on multiple platforms. Compaq leads the table with the highest number of SAN installations in the country. There are number of factors that will fuel this market:

Applications: The increased implementation of high availability enterprise level applications such as ERP, CRM and data warehousing software across enterprises has contributed to the growing storage market in India. These applications involve tremendous data analysis and distribution, all of which require storage.

According to IDC, the need for storage will triple by 2003. In terabytes, this means the current 1,459 terabytes of storage in India will increase to 5,706 TB by 2003. Applying a networking model to storage has become a necessity as only a networked environment (storage network) can provide a reliable and scalable foundation for a zero latency organisation one that enables freely an immediate exchange of information.

Storage consolidation: For years organisations “have been using server-attached storage, server hard disks and tapes. This makes data sharing complicated and backups difficult to administer. It’s high time that they consolidate their storage be it tape libraries, SAN or NAS, to a central location.”

Storage consolidation offers flexible and centrally managed storage that can be distributed to provide the performance and availability demanded by applications. It lets organisations manage growth, control security and information access, and provide rapid response to changing business demands.

The awareness on the storage front is increasing and it is now believed that enterprises are willing to spend 40 to 50 percent of IT infrastructure spending on storage.

Disaster management now an essential

The events of September 11 made it clear that catastrophic events can take place and can hurt a business for months or even years. In many cases, the cost of recovery is simply too great. Banking and financial services, commercial distribution, logistics, hospitals and travel are all sectors where disaster recovery is beginning to be taken seriously in India.

Storage management software is gaining importance

The storage software market is forecast to undergo a major boom, which will sustain the infrastructure market through this rough period. Singapore is expected to be the region’s fastest-growing market, with growth figures of approximately 55 percent year-on-year, while India is expected to increase by about 50 percent, says IDC.

Software controls all activities within storage systems and plays a key role in enhancing performance and supporting multiple hardware systems. It provides the end-user cost benefits and also provides an information infrastructure for businesses, call centres, service providers and e-businesses to execute, scale and provide better services. Key verticals that will drive this market are banks, financial institutions and the telecom sector.

The vendors addressing this market include EMC, Legato, Veritas and Computer Associates. EMC is shifting its focus to storage software and is targeting the high-end storage market. These products can work on any platform. Of EMC’s R&D initiatives, on which the company spent $1 billion in 2001 globally, nearly 75 percent went towards software development. Veritas, Legato and CA address the SME segment in this space.

Storage consultancy and services

Customers are evaluating storage as a separate decision, apart from the server decision. The storage buying decision has become increasingly complex and difficult to deal with for customers. Storage vendors like Compaq and HP are offering storage consultancy and management services bundled with hardware to help customers in storage planning, defining a storage strategy, and finally providing the end-to-end solution. Compaq is expecting healthy returns (100 percent growth) from this area.

Tape-based storage will continue to grow

The total market for tape-based storage stood at Rs 100 crore in H1 2001 and is expected to grow at 20 percent. Tape-based storage solutions are undergoing a change and are moving towards automated tape libraries and LTO (Linear Tape-Open) Technology that is optimised for high capacity and performance with high reliability, in either a stand-alone or an automated environment. Ultrium (LTO) allows for 200 GB capacity (2:1 compression) in a single compact cartridge with speed of 30 Mbps as compared 15 Mbps in DLTs. Government departments who are going in for e-governance, and the market for data archival will drive this market.