Disk storage capacity to grow 10 times by 2008

Thursday, 09 December 2004, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: With the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the services and manufacturing sectors, Indian disk storage capacity is set to grow 10 times by 2008. The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) of India estimates the country will have 52.7 peta bytes (1,000 terra bytes) of storage capacity in the next four years as against 5.5 peta bytes (Pb) currently. "The phenomenal growth of telecos, financial services and the business process outsourcing/IT enabled services (BPO/ITES) sectors will continue to put pressure on enterprises to expand their storage and networking capacity for coping with the increasing demand," said SNIA chairperson P.K. Gupta. "Once the e-governance projects of various states across the country gather momentum, the need for local and remote data centres will multiply to ensure real-time access to information and transactions round the year," Gupta told IANS here. Starting on a modest scale of 2.5 Pbs two years ago, voice and data storage capacity in India has more than doubled this year - registering 100 percent growth in 18-24 months. At this rate, the association expects storage capacity to more than double to 10.6Pb by 2005, 18.2Pb by 2006 and 32Pb by 2007. "In the financial sector alone, the decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to maintain data on all transactions in the electronic or digital form for 10 years and the launch of the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system by banks will drive storage capacity," Gupta said on the sidelines of the third Storage Networking Summit. Though the cost of disk drives has been declining by 40-45 percent annually due to excess capacities built in developed markets, especially in the US, storage industry in India will continue to grow on account of the technology boom being witnessed in the services sector. By 2008, industry players spanning vendors, application developers and system integrators are expected to generate about $8 billion in revenues from $450 million in 2005 and $300 million in 2004. Global firms such as EMC, Sun Microsystems, Net Appliances, Veritas, Silicon Graphics and Hitachi Data Systems dominate the industry with Indian vendors like TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam developing applications for storage systems and disaster recovery centres. According to Silicon Valley-based storage evangelist Kumar Malavalli, the increasing use of pervasive technologies in vertical sectors spanning the global economy has made storage management a challenging and complex task, with network and information security becoming critical for seamless operations. "Business disruption due to lack of continuous data availability has become an expensive proposition. The National Archives and Records Administration in the US reported that about 90 percent of companies that lost their data centre for 10 days or more filed for bankruptcy within a year of disaster striking them," said Malavalli. "Even the largest enterprises are exposed to the prospect of frequent business interruptions due to infrequent back-ups, back-up failures, data corruption, virus attacks and other disasters," he added. Post 9/11, the importance of data storage and disaster recovery centres for maintaining continuous operations have forced enterprises the world over to invest in storage infrastructure. Stricter regulatory compliance in various countries have also made it imperative that businesses across verticals maintain their data and information for at least a period of 10 years, necessitating more storage capacity. The advent of triple play - voice, data and video on the Internet and digital electronic gadgets - are also forcing service providers and entertainment players to rapidly scale up their storage centres for a smooth interface between their service offerings and product range.
Source: IANS