Storage

Neglected and overlooked: The SB storage story

Small businesses are realizing the importance of a good IT infrastructure. But in the process of integrating things together, storage is not being given its due importance. By Neeraj Gandhi

Businesses today are not only dependent on existing information but also on that which is being created everyday and all this data is putting pressure on storage systems. Information is generated 24x7 in any organization irrespectively of its size. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that timely information or data has become an intrinsic part of the engine that drives the growth of any business. Incidentally, the same information or data if mismanaged or lost, can spell a disaster for the organization. Not only that, it would further lead to loss of potential business opportunities and even bankruptcy. Therefore, ensuring that this information is stored and saved properly becomes extremely critical to adhere to business objectives of any enterprise.

This, in turn, forces an organization to contemplate and develop a healthy storage infrastructure. Interestingly, it is indeed this storage infrastructure (acting as a backbone) that has emerged as the competitive differentiator, for it houses valuable data for an organization—be it transactional, operational or customer data. Additionally, storage can also be thought of as a vault. This is because when you retrieve data, there is an expectation for the exact data to emerge or resurface.

It is this capability of storage networks that plays a critical part in this process.

Looking at the storage options that are available for the small businesses, the list includes Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS), Server Attached Storage (SAS), Storage Area Network (SAN) and tapes as secondary storage option and as a backup device. A combination of a couple or more of these can help a small business develop a good storage infrastructure that can reduce its complexities in managing storage and help increase storage utilization, which is may be under 30%. The small business survey highlights that small businesses have a basic IT infrastructure in place, such as desktops, notebooks, operating system, printers and basic networking, but are a little slow in embracing advanced technologies in networked storage. A good approach towards networked storage would be to first consolidate their discrete storage resources (DAS), free up the server resources to do what they do best—compute and then pick up networked storage technologies such as NAS for file access and SAN for block access (iSCSI or FC-SAN) depending upon their storage growth, future plans and criticality of data.

The inside story: planning for networked storage

Looking into the existing storage infrastructure at India SBs, the survey highlights that 46% of the 195 respondents said that they are using DAS as the storage medium. Comparing this with the last year’s survey, only 42% of the respondents confirmed the deployment of DAS at their end. The use of DAS at these small businesses is largely dictated by the advantages that come along with it [servers]. The fact that it is easy to deploy and has a lower initial cost, helps DAS score above the other storage media. DAS also offers an edge to those businesses that have fixed IT budgets and want to quickly add storage capacity without much planning, spending time and with a low outlay.

With 29% adoption, NAS emerges as the second most preferred form of storage. It comes in handy for organizations looking at speedy access to data for multiple clients. Since the applications and the files are not hogging server processor resources in NAS, the access to files is much faster. Besides, it can be easily managed even without dedicated IT staff.

However, SAN still remains elusive for small businesses, with only 16% of the respondent deploying it. The choice to deploy a SAN-based storage architecture is largely dictated by the necessity to manage data, which is growing at an exponential rate. Small businesses, which are finding it difficult to manage data on each server, are going for low-cost SAN solutions. In fact, NAS is the step towards SAN. Further, with small businesses looking at NAS, SAN could also make way in this business segment in the near future.

The low percentage (13%) of Server-Attached Storage (SAS) can be attributed to the fact that small businesses have started looking at NAS as a viable option. It also indicates that storage which was earlier stacked inside a single server is now making its way to more secured devices to make it available to multiple clients in a much faster manner.

Tapes find a presence only at 9% of the respondents, followed by 4% for virtual tape library. That’s because the storage requirements of SBs are still small and do not warrant a tape drive to backup their data. The percentage of tape usage has come down as compared to last year.

BFSI, ITeS top networked storage consumption

Analyzing the situation of storage adoption across SB verticals, the survey states that it is the BFSI vertical that has perhaps the presence of all kinds of storage medium in a proportionally distributed manner. 48% of the respondents in this vertical said that they use DAS as a storage medium. 36% confirmed the presence of a Server-Attached Storage (SAS), followed by 29% with NAS. SAN, tape and Virtual Tape Library (VTL) witnessed support of 18% each.

BFSI is followed by the IT/ ITeS vertical with a good storage infrastructure. While 47% of the respondents in this vertical said that they have deployed DAS, this was followed with 37% and 22% respondents going in for NAS and SAN respectively. SAS finds presence at 15% of the respondents and 19% used tape, which is comparatively higher than rest of the verticals surveyed. That said, none of the respondents in this vertical, confirmed the use of a virtual tape library.

The professional and other services vertical came next in line followed by manufacturing, wholesale/retail, and utilities/ transportation/ real estate/ construction. This does not indicate that verticals other than BFSI and IT/ITeS are not deploying storage solutions at all. It only suggests that the deployment is limited, and is done in a restrictive manner as compared to these two verticals.

The percentage figures represent planned technology penetration /usage within SBs. These numbers may add up to more than 100% since a particular respondent may plan to invest on multiple technologies. Base = 179

Lack of budgets holding back adoption

NSK Textile is a Delhi based textile company, with over a hundred employees on its payroll. Though it is not a very big company, it has an annual turnover of about $25 million. The company realizes the importance of storage at its end, and the emphasis at the moment is on the efficient backup of the data. “We currently use DAT tapes for data backup as we can retain data for a longer time, and it is safer and cheaper than other storage devices. That said, I believe that our existing storage infrastructure is not up to the mark [in terms of storage utilization and cost associated in managing it] and needs to be upgraded to meet the growing demands of the organization. A major challenge that we face today is to take an online backup of all the data,” said Mandeep Bharadwaj, IT Head, NSK Textile Ltd.

At Singer India Ltd, the situation is quite different. Since the nature of its work does not involve a highly secure infrastructure to be in place, the storage aspect is taken care off by just the basic storage medium, viz, DAS. Additionally the IT team is pretty small. “We are only two of us at Delhi to manage the IT infrastructure,” said S K Sharma, Deputy Manager, Systems, Singer India. He added “The nature of work requires the use of basic applications such as Microsoft Office, Tally and e-mail. We have a 40 GB cartridge, which we use for monthly backups. Our existing infrastructure is meeting our needs and we are satisfied with it.”

Ketan Mandhare, Database Developer/Software Programmer, Auchtel Products, said, “We have two servers to address our storage requirements—a database server and a mail server. We are using QNAP hard disk, which is a network attached storage device, to take a backup of our data. Backup for us is vital, since the data that is lying on a computer is important and we cannot afford to lose it.”

Partha Banerjee, EDP Manager, B E Pumps added, “We normally take backup on CDs. As of now, we don’t have any kind of storage infrastructure as such. In future we might go for it, but it’s totally dependent upon our business requirements and only if some problem occurs. We even don’t have any dedicated storage software at the moment.”

That said, the situation at the Old World Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., a flagship company with vested interests in hospitality and entertainment business, is quite different from the others in the league. With over 650 employees, and 150 systems in place, the organization has adopted quite a holistic approach towards storage. Also, given the fact that the applications being leveraged are quite advanced, like SQL, Oracle database, ERP suite for hospitality, POS accounting software, property management system, inventory management system, HR software etc, it has put a robust storage infrastructure in place.

Sanjeev Kumar Sinha, Sr. Manager (IT), Old World Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., said “Out of our total IT expenditure, 20% is allocated towards storage. It is ranked third in our IT priority list, after hardware and networking. We do daily backups of servers and workstations. At the moment we are using DVDs and HDDs for backup, but soon we will be going for some Storage Systems Array, be it SAN or NAS.”

A low priority item

The report brings to light a striking revelation in terms of the IT spend among the small businesses in the country. It states that 77% of the respondents spent less than Rs. 50 lakh on IT last year. 13% of the respondents spent somewhere between Rs. 50 lakh and 1 crore. Only 10% spent above Rs 1 crore on IT in 2007. This expenditure on IT was on the higher side among the BFSI, IT/ITeS and Professional services vertical.

However, it is not the overall IT spending that is more striking. Rather it is the allocation of funds towards storage per se that paints an astonishing picture. The fact that the IT budget has increased over the years is a proof that IT is making inroads in this segment and also that processes are being automated. Storage, however, seems to have taken a backseat.

An analysis of the report states that desktops emerge as the clear winner in terms of acquiring IT hardware and infrastructure. 90% of the respondents said that desktops are at the top in their IT list, followed by 76% supporting laptops, and 62% saying that servers are also high on priority. But only 10% of the respondents ranked storage on high priority in the IT infrastructure list. 30% ranked storage somewhere between 4 and 6 on a scale of one to ten, and a huge 60% ranked storage below seven.

“If I were to rate storage on a scale of one to ten, I would rate it six [scale one being highest]. A major portion of our IT expenditure is spent on maintaining our mail server with its overhead expenses,” said Bharadwaj.

Even in terms of the ‘Rank-1’ spending areas for the current year indicates that at present desktops dominate the pie at 62%, followed by notebooks (12%) and servers (5%). Storage shares a small pie of the 9% allocated to other IT infrastructure that includes, security, enterprise applications, services, Internet & communications, connectivity & wireless, cabling and power conditioning, etc. This portion occupied by others is projected to grow to 13% this year.

The way forward

Even with regards to future investment in storage, the survey does not paint a healthy picture. It highlights that only 27% of the respondents have plans to deploy some or the other storage medium to support the growing business. The majority still intends to invest in desktops/ laptops, printers, networking, and connectivity. Besides, what is more astonishing is the fact that storage does not fall in the list of top ten IT investment areas for almost all verticals.

As per survey DAS and SAS will garner most of the investment with 29% and 22% of 179 respondents planning to invest in these areas. Networked storage (NAS and SAN) will find fewer but still a respectable percentage of takers with 16% evincing interest in NAS and 12% in SAN. Of course, this varies from vertical to vertical with BFSI and professional services showing the most interest in SAN (15% and 18% respectively). In the case of NAS it is professional services and manufacturing that have showed the greatest interest (18% each) followed by utilities/ transportation/ real estate/ construction with 17%. Oddly enough IT/ITES has show the greatest interest in DAS (38%) and SAS (33%).

However, SBs, which intend to invest in storage, are looking at advanced storage infrastructure and are quite optimistic of the benefits that it will bring about. “We would be going for hardcore storage systems soon and will upgrade to NAS or SAN because of the data manageability and security of these systems,” added Sinha.

“With the business growing we would require an efficient and cost-effective solution. For storage also looking for some solution built around open source code for which we don’t have to pay a huge amount just for a one odd incident of data loss,” added Bharadwaj.

“Presently we are using the local systems storage and tapes for our storage needs. However, going ahead in line with our expansion plans, I think SAN would be a requirement for us,” said, Gopalakrishnan C.R., Asst Manager (Tech Services), Nelito Systems Limited.

The storage environment has changed drastically over the years, and is now characterized by the need to manage the huge volumes of data. Given the importance the data holds for any organization, the importance of storage infrastructure becomes obvious. It is important for the small businesses to note that a good storage infrastructure forms the backbone of a growing enterprise. There is a need for a change in mindset, and the small businesses need to acknowledge this fact to move ahead.

With inputs from Nivedan Prakash
neeraj.gandhi@expressindia.com