SMBs opt for low-cost SAN solutions

The way ahead for smart storage lies in low-cost SAN solutions that offer easy management and a scalable architecture, says ABHINAV SINGH

B CHANDRASEKHAR points out that IP-SANs are price competitive—a 1 TB increase in data capacity on an IP-SAN would cost about $10,000, whereas it would cost $125,000 for the same level of scaling up on a FC-SAN

DABUR, Woodstock School, Wipro Spectramind, Macmillan, Pricol, Formis Media Technology and Scientific Publishing House are just some prominent SMBs (small and medium businesses) that have deployed low-cost SAN solutions. There was a time when Indian SMBs did not show much interest in having a consolidated storage infrastructure, and were quite satisfied with DAS. The mindset has changed, and lots of Indian SMBs are migrating from DAS to networked storage, predominately low-cost SAN and a few NAS headers. Higher storage capacity and improved utilisation are the primary drivers. Many SMBs which are part of a larger supply chain, and are linked to large enterprises, are going in for networked storage in droves. Some have become Net-savvy and are putting a lot of information on the Web—hence the need for networked storage.

Says Rajesh Janey, director, Channels and Alliances, India and SAARC, EMC, “Applications such as CAD, CAM and CAE used by automotive component manufacturers, healthcare organisations and chip development houses—and not the size of an SMB—are going to drive the Indian SMB storage market.” That said, awareness with regard to the need for an advanced storage infrastructure is still low among Indian SMBs. Storage vendors who were earlier concentrating on large enterprises have well-defined strategies to tap this market. Many have come up with customised low-cost products and specific channel distribution programmes.

Parijat Chakraborty, senior manager, User and Communications Research, IDC India says, “Indian Storage vendors will have to carefully identify their target customers in the SMB segment. Within this segment there are small organisations that have critical storage requirements, and also fairly large set-ups whose storage requirements are still not critical in nature.” Adds Rajesh Rege, director, Data Management

and Storage Business, Sun Microsystems, “To win SMB customers it is important to maintain competitive price points, pre-configure and pre-test out-of-the-box solutions that are easy to connect and deploy, and provide optimal performance.”

RAJESH JANEY says that applications such as CAD, CAM and CAE are going to drive the Indian SMB storage market

SMBs latch on to low-cost SANs

It has been observed that many SMBs are going in for low-cost SAN storage or full-fledged SAN solutions. Explains Shailesh Agarwal, country manager, Storage, IBM Global Services, “Most of our SMB customers have gone in for a fibre channel SAN that is directly attached to the server. High-end SMB customers are moving towards full-fledged SANs since they have multiple server clusters.”

The trend of SMBs investing in SANs has been driven by necessity and not by choice. Agarwal adds, “SANs facilitate storage consolidation. With an increase in data size it was becoming difficult for SMBs to manage storage on each server; this has compelled them to go in for storage consolidation and hence [the phenomenon of] low-cost SANs.” Besides, SMBs need to have robust backup policies in order to go in for disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity solutions. A SAN facilitates efficient backup management, and helps enterprises chalk out their DR strategy. Agarwal points out, “The prices of SAN boxes have crashed and they have become affordable for SMBs.”

Vendors like Intransa and Acer are concentrating on IP-SANs, and are bullish about their potential. Intransa is banking upon the abundant IP-related skill-sets, and the low price tag attached to these products. In the recent past the company has bagged deals from customers such as Wipro Spectramind and L&T in Hazira, and is in

the process of closing deals with 15 mid-sized businesses. B Chandrasekhar, country manager, Intransa India explains, “Spectramind wanted a scalable storage architecture with SAN functionality. Within three months of deployment, the company has 1 TB of data on an IP-SAN. IP-SANs are price competitive—a 1 TB increase in data capacity on an IP-SAN costs about $10,000, whereas it would cost $125,000 for the same level of scaling on a FC-SAN.”

Acer, a new entrant to the Indian storage market, believes that SMBs can derive immense value from IP-SAN solutions. Reveals Sam Oomen Thomas, assistant general manager, Marketing, Enterprise Product Group, Acer India, “We are targeting organisations with a minimum of four servers with our storage solutions. Acer is coming up with two black box IP-SAN solutions for India in July 2004.”

Sunil Nawani, national channels manager, Hitachi Data Systems, is bullish about the Indian SMB segment: “Currently we are getting 20 percent of our revenues from the SMB space, and we expect this to grow to 60 percent over the next three years.”

Vendors reach out

In order to win SMB customer confidence, storage vendors have embarked on a specific marketing strategy to help their products reach a larger base of SMBs. Storage vendors whose immediate focus has been on SMBs are relying on their channel strategy to strengthen their reach among Indian SMBs. Chakraborty of IDC says, “Indian SMBs expect a high level of sales and service from storage vendors. They look for storage solutions that are easy to use and manage, because, unlike large enterprises, they cannot afford to support a large team to manage their storage infrastructure.”

Backup software a hit

When it comes to software, SMBs are largely using it for backup. Says Pravir Arora, director, marketing, CA India, “The market for storage backup software is at its peak in India as far as SMBs are concerned. With many Indian SMBs going in for storage consolidation, we see them adopting Storage Resource Management (SRM) software.” Many SMBs which went in for storage backup software a few years ago are likely to upgrade to storage management software, and all new adopters are likely to buy backup software.

Says P K Gupta, director, Strategic Development, Asia-Pacific, Japan and Korea, Legato Software Systems, “With SMBs digitising their information and then storing it, they are bound to face problems which will drive the use of storage management software.” Vendors like Veritas are hoping that storage replication software will become popular among Indian SMBs. Agendra Kumar, country manager, Veritas India says, “Besides replication software, we see specific backup software for notebooks and desktops taking off with Indian SMBs.”

Stand-alone drives still popular

Although the Indian SMB market is witnessing a shift towards networked storage, tape vendors continue to see potential for stand-alone tape drives. These devices are expected to continue generating demand as large sections of SMBs are still on DAS. Says Jim Simon, director, marketing, Asia Pacific, Quantum Corporation, “We recently introduced stand-alone tape drives for SMBs. Most of our SMB tape products will be directly attached to the servers that are being backed up.” Avijit Basu, marketing manager, Network Storage Solutions, HP India, says that SMBs are investing in entry-level autoloaders and tape libraries to consolidate backups.

The enormous increase in data size even in the case of SMBs is putting a strain on backup windows. This is expected to create demand for tape automation libraries. Notes Raghu Prasad, business development manager for India at Exabyte, “SMBs start with a stand-alone tape drive, but a few are likely to scale up to tape automation.”

Most storage vendors expect SMBs to contribute handsomely to their growth. In some cases they are even expecting that the contribution coming in from the SMB segment will overtake that of large enterprises, in volume if not in value.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com