The Rise of Scalable Storage Solutions in the E-Business Era

As the Web economy transforms the business landscape, organizations are under increasing pressure to provide instantaneous, accurate services to their customers. The requirement for speed is a direct contradiction to the need for accuracy, making data management a critical consideration. With the exponential growth of Web and Internet content, the demand for reliable and scalable storage solutions has become a top priority for Internet, Application Service Providers (ASPs), and traditional brick-and-mortar organizations.

Key Takeaways:

• Organizations require agile, scalable, and affordable storage approaches that can support unpredictable transaction volumes and 24x7 availability.
• The days of monolithic storage solutions are numbered, and emerging Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution offerings are driving innovation.
• The NAS market is projected to hit $6.5 billion by 2003, while the worldwide demand for SAN solutions is estimated to be over $15 billion by 2002.
• SAN and NAS solutions deliver increased storage capacity and performance while reducing the cost and complexity associated with scaling expensive server infrastructure.
• NAS is a discreet approach suitable for workgroups, while SAN is an enterprise solution that stores data accessible by multiple clients and servers.
• Integrated NAS/SAN approaches can provide robust reliability and scalability, reducing the complexity of configuration and management.
• ASPs are becoming major players in the e-Economy, providing capacity aggregation and data warehousing capabilities for hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Decision Support applications.
• SAN and NAS solutions are integral enabling technologies for organizations to support their IT application and infrastructure requirements.
• Organizations need to implement a disciplined data management strategy to ensure bulletproof performance, leveraging new technologies within a big-picture strategic approach.

Statistics:

• The NAS market is projected to hit $6.5 billion by 2003 (International Data Corporation).
• The worldwide demand for SAN solutions is estimated to be over $15 billion by 2002.
• San and NAS solutions deliver increased storage capacity and performance, reducing the cost and complexity associated with scaling expensive server infrastructure.
• NAS solutions are particularly well-suited for workgroups with need for additional storage.
• ASPs are becoming major players in the e-Economy, providing capacity aggregation and data warehousing capabilities for hosted CRM and Decision Support applications.

Sources:

• International Data Corporation
• Shaf Mohebbi, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Bitco Enterprises (Ashburn, VA).