Trends
India Storage Inc.: Consolidation and virtualisation will rule
The growing needs for both data storage and data protection have been dictating enterprise storage expenditure. Overall, it’s demand that is driving the Indian storage market, says Rahul Neel Mani

NAS & SAN
NAS and SAN: perfect partners
Some say that NAS competes with SAN and that the two will eat into each other’s market. But Gaurav Patra says this is no longer a valid theory since industry pundits now swear by the convergence of the two

Tapes
India Inc. automates its tapes
The Indian secondary storage market is witnessing a shift from low-cost tape drives to network-oriented tape automation products, namely super drives (autoloaders) and libraries, says Akhtar Pasha

Storage Software
Storage management software market surges ahead
Far from being just a peripheral activity, storage management today stands as a top-notch priority in an IT manager’s agenda. Companies are increasingly moving towards data consolidation through storage management software. Chitra Padmanabhan reports on why storage software today is seen as a strategic element in IT infrastructure

Personal Storage
Storage gets portable
The personal storage market is in flux. Several exciting options have been launched in the market, including pen drivers and DVD writers, but consumers are slow to respond, says Prashant L Rao. Once PCs with USB drives account for the bulk of the installed base of computers, that too will change

Low Cost SANs
Affordable SANs gain ground in SME market
Do Storage Area Networks (SAN) make sense for SMEs? While it is true that SANs have been limited to the enterprise segment in India in the past, dropping prices of fibre channel switches and disks, and easier deployment, have made low-cost SANs an attractive option for SMEs, says Akhtar Pasha

Business Continuity Management
DR & BCM growth lures storage vendors in India
Though the demand for disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity management (BCM) solutions is negligible now, in the next two years India could turn out to be the growth hub for both these technologies in the APAC region, says Shipra Arora

Case Study
The airline that’s never grounded: IA’s DR saga
59 aircraft, 66 offices countrywide, 17 offices overseas, approximately 275 flights flying 20,000 people a day and 210 GB of mass storage. These are the components that go into the making of domestic air carrier Indian Airlines. IA is probably one of the few public sector organisations with a disaster recovery system up-and-running. Rahul Neel Mani reports

Storage Management
Storage management: Automation is the future
The demand for Network Attached Storage and Storage Area Networks is on the rise. But who will manage and run these huge networked storage systems? As GAURAV PATRA points out, many companies find themselves short of both the infrastructure and talent needed to manage them

Virtualization
Virtualisation: Integrating disparate islands of storage
If you wish to have a solution or technology to integrate your disparate storage devices and manage them as one logical unit, it may be storage virtualisation technology that you are looking for, say Stanley Glancy and Srikanth R P

Consolidation
Modular storage—the key to effective storage consolidation
How do companies keep pace with growing volumes of information and demand for always-on, instantaneous access, while the resources to manage that information are not even close to increasing at the same rates? Will adding more storage systems solve the problem? The answer to all these issues, says Sudhakar Rao, lies in consolidation of existing storage systems into a more manageable storage architecture

Business Case for Data Protection
Building a compelling case for data protection decisions
While the need for data protection is felt strongly by most corporates, when it comes to actual spend, data protection is treated like any other IT segment. How do CIOs and IT heads convince managements of the need to spend on data protection? LYNNE VANARSDALE says they need to do so with a logic and language that CEOs and company heads will find compelling, and provides some extremely useful pointers