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Deploying IT, aligning it with the organizations business goals, and creating a scalable architecture is a fundamental yet significant challenge facing todays CIOs. A successful IT backbone is a judicious blend of apps and hardware that create an infrastructure to be used by thousands of users. If we look at the key components of an IT infrastructure, storage is the vital link that secures the data, and an enterprises digital assets reside on a plethora of storage topologies and devices. A testimony of the booming storage market, led by the networking boom, is the increasing focus vendors give to storage. Today, storage has become a separate business entity and is clearly separated from servers. The growth is driven by the explosion of dataestimated to be growing at about 60% annually. Markets like India, where digitization is higher, with organizations going on an aggressive automation and expansion drive, are creating huge demand for storage.

According to a report by IDC, The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010, information will grow at a CAGR of 57% between 2006 and 2010 to reach 988 exabytes. And Asia Pacific, excluding Japan, will grow by 30-40% faster. What this growth means is that it is equivalent to approximately three million times the information in all the books ever written. As per the report, organizations, including businesses of all size, agencies, governments, and associations will be responsible for the security, privacy, reliability, and compliance of at least 85% of the information. What makes the situation more complex and somewhat uncontrollable is the nature of the digital information generated. Over 95% of the digital information consists of unstructured data. Hence, managing storage and giving a structure to unstructured data will be the key growth driver.

Reflecting on this, Manoj Chugh, president, EMC, India and SAARC, says, The information deluge is making it imperative for organizations to redesign their IT strategy, putting information at center stage. The problem is that todays IT infrastructures are not designed to deal with new challengessecurity and privacy to the need to store, manage, protect, leverage, and retrieve critical information. Chugh also says that IT infrastructures are stressed because of an avalanche of information, most of it coming from completely new sources and in completely new forms like images, voice, and video. The new digital information tends to replicate itself uncontrollably and is not subject to traditional best-practices of the data center.

Shailesh Agarwal, country manager, Storage, IBM India, says, The enterprise spend on storage is increasing in India year-on-year. Segments like banking, telecom, digital media, surveillance, and a host of others are driving the need for more storage. More and more data storage means that what is stored has to be intelligently managed. With rapid networking, enterprises need to give round the clock access to its apps and data, and for that a well-managed storage management strategy is a must.

Storage Challenges
Since IT budgets have become largely flat, the toughest challenge faced by CIOs is to architect and manage the right storage infrastructure at a reduced budget, which address the data and information growth. Additionally, there are challenges in managing and protecting the data efficiently. Considering the need for content of various forms to be managed effectively, storage has become a big issue because of which organizations need to look at solutions like enterprise content management (ECM) and archiving.

New regulations and compliance (IT Act, SOX, Clause 49, HIPPA) that organizations are bound to adhere to are becoming the in-thing. This will in turn force enterprises to adopt concepts like content addressed storage (CAS). Email management is also considered as a significant challenge with CIOs needing to create a robust email management system. Rajendra Dhavale, director, Technical Sales, CA India, says, Information governance is indeed a key part of our storage strategy. Archival of email is critical and is required by various regulations. Moreover, other forms of communication like instant IM chat need to be intelligently archived.

Consolidation and virtualization are two technologies that characterize every IT deployment, and most of our customers insist on it Shailesh Agarwal country manager, Storage, IBM India/South Asia	Large and medium sized businesses are now treating storage as a separate entity from servers, and have realized the merits of network storage Vishal Dhupar MD, Symantec India & SAARC	We see a great boost in the mid-size market, resulting in high growth for midrange SAN deployments L Sivashankaran, director, Storage, Sun Microsystems India	Information governance is a key part of our strategy. Archival of email is required by various regulations Rajendra Dhavale, director, technical sales CA India

As we look beyond data, disaster recovery and business continuity has become an important issue. Creating a DR site that ushers in 100% data security is a big challenge. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, DR tops the IT agenda of the CIOs. Careful planning in selecting the DR site and putting in place effective and secure back up from a primary to secondary site will set the stage of seamless business continuity. Close on the heels of DR is another big challenge of managing data security. Says Chugh, Assuring data confidentiality and integrity have become major security challenges. Customers not only want to avoid the financial implications of data loss and the potential negative publicity, they are also challenged by information-specific compliance requirements imposed by the industry and government regulations.

Prakash Krishnamoorthy, business manager, Mid-range Products, Storage Works Division, HP India Sales, says, When we talk storage, its much more than just capacity. It is about effectively protecting data, providing business continuity, and creating a secure environment. Data is increasingly becoming structured and that is driving the market. But, any storage infrastructure will have a mix of SAN and NAS, with business apps driving SAN and files making for NAS.

Growing amounts of data from all areas of an organization, coupled with the need to support a non-stop business model and ever smaller recovery timeframes make data protection even more challenging Soumitra Agarwal, marketing director, Network Appliance	NAS and SAN have specific strengths and are used for defined purposes. The adoption of these technologies is dependent on the business requirements, and cost and value acquired through them Manoj Chugh, president, EMC India and SAARC	When we talk of storage its much more than just capacity. It is about effectively protecting data, providing business continuity and creating a secure environment Prakash Krishnamoorthy, business manager, mid-range products, storage works division, HP India Sales

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