The ever-growing data is the key driver for the storage industry growing at an aggressive pace. As per DQTop20 findings, the external storage market during FY 2004-05 grew by 18%, and logged in revenues of Rs 565 crore. Indian enterprises going up the maturity curve in terms of IT augured well for storage. For instance, during 2004-05, one saw the beginning of the gradual shift from DAS to NAS and SAN. The network storage market, both NAS and SAN combined, grew at a healthy rate of 39% and summed up at Rs 311 crore. An indication to the adoption of next level of storage from DAS can be amply seen with the 7% decline in the DAS market. So with CIO preferences on storage changing and wider options available, let's have a look at the key trends that shaped the last year and what lies ahead for the enterprise and the industry.

SAN gets saner
The biggest driver here is IP SAN that drove the adoption levels. The DAS to SAN migration based on IP was more pronounced mainly due to the lesser TCO as compared to fiber channels. IP SAN offered a simpler topology as it ushered in the SAN functionality on the TCP/IP. Also, IP SANs being compatible to Ethernet made the network management issues easier as storage management over the WAN brought new dimension to remote storage management at far lesser cost. But what is to be factored here is that IP gave a whole new dimension to affordability for SMBs in adopting SAN. But, at the same time, the traction IP SAN demonstrated over the last year made the SAN market more defined with buying segments aligning as per their affordability factor. For instance, SAN over fiber channel is still the preferred option for telecom companies and large enterprises with distributed IT environments.

Enterprises can also leverage the other latest technologies like iSCSI, or Internet SCSI. This is an industry-standard method of encapsulating SCSI block data within TCP/IP packets. It enables SCSI tape and disk devices to be accessed in maximum security by using traditional IP hardware and software, anywhere an organization's IP infrastructure extends. This means an organization that has already invested in an IP network doesn't have to invest in a very expensive second network simply to set up a storage area network (SAN).

Like other areas of IT, over the last year the affordability factor considerably expanded with a slew of external storage options for the enterprises. So enterprises can now connect multiple servers to a single storage network that creates a SAN environment. This method provides a very flexible SAN environment as the number of servers can either be added or scaled down.

Disk based storage: gaining ground
During the year, a significant development was India adopting disk-based storage in addition to tapes. Overall, in the Asia-Pacific secondary storage market, India was ranked second, behind Australia, with 19% overall market share. This shows the traction tapes had over the year with all vendors launching various products. But with disk-based storage showing momentum, it might challenge tapes in the days ahead. Disk-based back up gained credence in the SMBs. Also, in terms of productivity and time spent, a disk-based storage scores ahead of tapes. For instance, it takes two hours to back up 1TB of data on a tape and the same can be backed up in 30 minutes using a disk-to-disk backup.

Storage automation: in the limelight
In its purest form, storage automation is the process of turning manual tasks into things the system manages by itself, with little or no human intervention required. This can include jobs such as storage provisioning, backup, restore and other tasks managed by an application or by the user. The goal is to translate business needs-such as a database that needs to be accessible round-the-clock-into a series of specific storage-related actions that the system can deal with on its own.

Vendors must cooperate with one another while industry-wide standards are being developed, but it will be some time before industry-wide storage management standards are fully adopted. Groups such as the SNIA have been working on the CIM/XML standards for auto-discovery and remote configuration for a long time, yet the first iteration of a systems management standard still has some way to go.

In today's complex business world, data is increasingly becoming a critical asset. Effectively and efficiently managing the storage of this growing asset is challenging organizations as they juggle shrinking staffs, stagnant budgets, and exploding costs. Organizations are asking themselves: How much data storage do we have? How can we reliably forecast future needs? Why is storage growing? How much worthless data is being stored? How much downtime is storage-related?

Enabling IT organizations to manage storage is key to not only containing costs but also verifying that mission-critical systems run smoothly. Going forward, the storage landscape in the country would further mature, with various technologies playing a complimentary role in creating a robust storage infrastructure.

Shrikanth G