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India might have joined the network storage race late but the growth and technology adoption have been phenomenal. In terms of revenue the total market has grown by almost 26 percent to an estimated Rs 882 crore. Though more than 57 percent of the total storage market is still on the direct access storage (DAS) mode, the 43 percent pie of network storage-including storage area network (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS)-is growing steadily.

Within the network storage segment, hardware occupies almost 80 percent of the sales revenues. The software part has now doubled its earlier share in the pie to 20 percent. However, the cost of hardware went down by almost 40 percent last year. In terms of revenues, storage hardware has shown a growth of around 28 percent while software scored an astounding jump of 147 percent, from Rs 71.04 crore to around 170 crore.

The reason is not very difficult to find out. Of the total data stored, almost 80 percent lies inactive and investment in hardware is made taking into account the future flow of data. After making certain investments in hardware, it is the software employed to manage, retrieve, replicate data which takes the center stage in the long run. Estimates show that for every $1 spent on hardware, almost $7 go into its management.

V&D estimates CyberMedia Research

Evolving Concepts
After information lifecycle management (ILM), the buzz in the storage industry is that of utility computing. Being promoted in a big way by vendors like IBM and Veritas, it essentially brings the concept of pay for what you use. In India, budget allocated for storage is still seen as a cost factor and utility computing gives the company the option to pay for the space being used from a grid of storage devices.

Serial ATA is another method being used to bring the cost factor down. ATA is typically a hard disk used for storage. It is popular because its per megabyte storage cost is 60–70 percent cheaper than other storage devices. These disks are connected to the network through serial ports instead of the normal fiber channels. Serial ATAs are proving to be beneficial for organizations where the demand for functionality is not very high. Similarly, nearline storage is also becoming popular as it reduces the cost of storage.

Virtualization is another concept which has become a trend of sorts due to its ability to simplify the retrieval and back up procedures. SAN virtualization allows various island of storage capacity to appear as one and hence facilitates better utilization of the resources. While during the process of consolidation there is a physical effort employed to bring the storage islands at one place here the same results are achieved but without any physical movement.

ILM has been accepted and implemented storage vendors. The basic premise data loses it value as time progresses and is used only as reference material after sometime. If the unused data is kept on the main storage devices, management and retrieval of useful data will become cumbersome.

Here ILM comes into affect. In simple terms it pushes the unused data to secondary level like on tapes which can be retrieved when needed. The storage architecture is designed to manage the data better on the basis of its time relevance.

IP Storage, New Contender
A combination of NAS-SAN architecture with the tapes giving the achieving support is gaining popularity. But with everything going online, companies are exploring new combinations to make storage more efficient.

One single application that has taken storage companies on a roll is e-mail-from four petabytes in 1999 to 230 petabytes in 2003. The number of e-mail has gone up from nine billion per day to 56.4 billion per day and will cross 164.3 billion per day in 2007. E-mail and Internet-related business/commercial transactions have increased data moving across IP networks. All this will require huge storage and back up capacity, which will fuel the overall growth of the market.

The new requirements demand the overcoming and reduction of the limitations of fiber channel SAN and NAS. SCSI (small computer system interface) over IP or iSCSI is fast emerging as a better alternative. iSCSI can be used as to create IP-based SAN facilitating block data transfer. This architecture enables high-speed, low-cost, long-distance storage solutions for web sites, service providers, enterprises and organizations dealing in streaming data that needs to be transmitted over the network.

The Challenges
Interoperability is one of the main hurdles. The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has come up with SMI-S (storage management initiative-specification) for storage vendors and is expected to announce ILM standards by Oct 2004. These would set some minimum standards for different products. However, the vendors would the have freedom to add features to make differentiate their product from others.

Keeping in mind that enterprises are storing critical data over networks, which are not in the control of the company like in case of the servers, security becomes another issue that requires immediate attention.

Driving down Storage Lane
BFSIs have embraced storage in a big way thanks to the need to centralize and automate data as well as adoption of core banking applications. Similarly, the explosive growth in telecommunications has fueled the demand to have better managed and scalable data storage facilities. The huge user base means more billing and hence more data archiving and retrieval for telcos.

High technology sector like semiconductor designers and manufacturers also need to store their design related data. Demand for reliable and faster storage solutions has been coming for IT companies like Intel, Texas Instruments, Polaris etc. In India oil and natural gas explorations have also perked up demand for seismic data storage.

Government organizations like the Railways and the PSUs are also realizing the need to consolidate storage. With e-governance initiatives hotting up, the future of this sector seems to be bright.

V&D estimates CyberMedia Research

In the past, storage vendors have been tapping into the storage needs of the big organizations for volumes. However, there is a huge market in the SMB segment that needs to be carefully explored. Their needs might not be much when taken individually but when the complete SMB segment is taken into account, the numbers are huge.

Disaster Recovery Gets Big
The shadow of 9/11 still lingers long and a rush to have disaster recovery sites has been bringing in good business for the storage companies. In fact, companies who have decided to centralize their data are first thinking of the disaster recovery system and then deciding on going ahead with their storage plans.

Though India does not have any specific laws on storage or disaster recovery, there are guidelines laid down by Sebi and RBI that has made companies to keep a back of data for a certain period which can extend from three months to three years. Similarly telecom companies are required to archive billing data and SMS records for some time. To sum up, the future of network storage in India looks bright.

Anurag Prasad