Moving on with the global data boom

Lee Ting Ting
New Straits Times
08-15-2001
Moving on with the global data boom
Byline: Lee Ting Ting
Edition: 2*
Section: News & Analysis

HAVE you ever heard of "zetta-bytes"? Well, it is a metric that represents a huge volume of digital data. To be precise, a zettabyte is one byte multiply by 10 to the power of 21 (or simply `1' with 21 zeros behind it).

In comparison, the more familiar gigabyte multiplies one byte by 10 to the power of nine (1,000,000,000). Although zettabytes may now sound like a blown up exaggeration, it will not be so in several years' time.
According to research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), mega companies will soon have to cope with zettabytes of data, as compared to the terabytes and petabytes they have to handle now.

In gauging the amount of worldwide data today, IDC estimates that most companies today have disk storage in gigabytes (GBs) sizes; larger ones have terabytes (TB) (most large companies now have an average of 15TB of online data); while extremely large companies have petabytes (PB). And by 2008, digital data will run into zettabytes.

According to Terry Keene, founder president of independent storage consultant Enabling Technologies Group, companies involved in front- end Internet (Web site) businesses are experiencing a tremendous data surge.

"For example, Excite.com reached 49TB of data in just two years, and Yahoo! adds about 1TB of storage every week," says Keene.

However, the biggest contributor to this data explosion is when companies look to leverage upon technology to enhance their back-end operations.

"The boom in corporate data is when companies start to use technology to connect backwards to their supply chain, or behind the scene to B2B exchanges," says Keene.

The worldwide disk storage now stands at about 600,000TB. The fact that this figure is doubling every year, the potential for the data storage business looks extremely bright.

IDC reports that by the year 2003, 17 per cent or US$45 billion (RM171 billion) of the world's IT spending will be focused on storage. Also by that time, 75 per cent of all server expenditure will be on storage systems - 70 per cent of which will be on networks and network-attached storage.

BE OPEN, PLEASE Data storage has been identified as one of the biggest potentials for revenue by technology vendors. Nevertheless, the maturity of storage solutions is yet to plateau. According to industry analysts, this is mainly due to the lack of support for open systems.

According to Keene, being "open" does not just refer to good computer hardware, but any product that is to mature into a commodity. He says that there are several criterions that should define the claim for having technology that is "open".

"That technology has to have a mass appeal, and there has to be standards around that product which everyone agrees with. That standards need to be open and fully available in order for that product to grow into a mass, mature commodity," says Keene.

Among the various storage players, Keene singles out IBM as a true advocate to open storage systems. He applauds IBM's commitment for open storage systems in all its offerings spanning back-up media of tapes and optical, to disk storage systems, storage networking solutions (NAS, SAN, iSCSI), storage software, and storage management systems.

Showing its commitment in action, IBM tied up with Compaq in a US$1 billion (RM3.8 billion) initiative last year to accelerate customer acceptance of open storage throughout the industry. "Putting aside their rivalry to join forces against mutual foe EMC in the high- end storage market, IBM and Compaq also resell each other's hardware and software; namely Compaq's StorageWorks system, and IBM's Shark storage system, Tivoli systems and AS/400 servers," says Keene.

He believes that this alliance will also help IBM gain more support in its crusade against EMC over storage area network (SAN) standards (which determine how storage is centralised into islands separate from the servers that tap into it).

In the context of driving home the importance of having open storage systems, Keene also explains the word "proprietary" which is often misunderstood. "The opposite of proprietary is free, and the opposite of open is closed. It is alright to have a storage system that is proprietary and open," says Keene.

This is because proprietary technologies drive profits, hence funding research and development work that will then encourage a mature product.

So being proprietary allows the vendor to obtain revenues, but being open at the same time brings benefit to the customers because they are not restricted to use other vendor products, without a negative performance impact on their existing investments.

Keene warns against many storage vendors which claim to be open, but analysis of their product/technology strategy actually reveals an extremely "closed" situation.

"EMC and Sun Microsystems are two examples because upon scrutiny, their front end could work with other vendor brands but back-end is still strictly limited to their own. Basically, its comes down to buy our brand if you want it to work," he says.

GENERAL RATINGS Keene says that according to analyst reports on the prowess of top storage players, IBM, Compaq, and EMC top the list in both vision and the ability to execute their product/technology strategies.

"Although EMC leads the pack in terms of revenues, Compaq actually sells the most storage system," says Keene.

Hitachi Data Systems, MTI Technology, and LSI Logic Symbios stand out in their ability to execute; while Sun Microsystems, Hewlett- Packard, STK and Dell are recognised for their vision for storage technology.

Illustrations/Photos:
Caption: Keene: The boom in corporate data is when companies start to
use technology to connect backwards to their supply chain, or behind
the scene to B2B exchanges.

(Copyright 2001)