What's in store? - Brief Article

Electronics Times, Oct 2, 2000

According to Dataquest, Internet start-ups will be the ones that drive the demand for storage in the future.

Adam Couture, industry analyst at Dataquest, said: "E-business customers hosted at Internet data centres will embrace the storage utility model before corporate data centres will. Corporate data centres have entrenched IT departments and established storage infrastructures. Internet data centres tend to serve customers with few or no storage resources. Even corporations with their own data centres tend to host their business to business and e-commerce applications from Internet data centres."

IBM's san concept anticipates large companies, particularly in the TV industry, developing digital storage. Although it is playing a longer game, it recognises that change is slower in larger organisations. Its report, Storage Area Networks: Opportunity for the Indirect Channel, outlines its development strategy.

"Increasingly companies view data separate from any single application and more as a strategic corporate asset... the emphasis shifts from storing data to transformation of raw data into actionable information... the san concept is more likely to be well received by early technology adopters."

IBM is still putting the structure together and de Zulueta emphasised the company's desire to work with customers to develop the system. Central to the concept is the san Manager, developed by Tivoli, which will be available by the end of the year. IBM began shipping the central infrastructure in August.

"In the next five years we will have an environment where one to one data distribution is possible. This infrastructure will do that," concluded de Zulueta.

Copyright: United Business Media Ltd.