Big storage for small firms

With Indian SMEs shifting to network-based storage, IT's big boys are smelling big bucks in this volumes business.

With IT adoption increasing among the small and medium enterprises (SME) managing data is becoming a clear priority.

As per the IDC quarterly disk storage tracker, Indian external disk storage market clocked $209 million (approx. Rs 919 crore) in the calendar year 2006 and had witnessed a growth of 43 per cent on a yearly basis.

In terms of capacity, the same market has expanded over 100 per cent in the same period and clocked 24.5 petabytes. Though an exact breakup for the SME segment is not available most of the companies agree that it contributes 30-40 per cent to their sales.

According to IDC predictions for 2007, IT vendors will focus on mid-size enterprises, which require speedy implementations and target a reasonably quick return on their IT investments.

Sanjit Sinha, associate vice president, research, IDC India, said, "The SME segment holds immense potential for storage capacity. Application will drive growth in data which will demand increased capacities. Reference data and unstructured content would impact the need for increased storage capacities strongly in the next few years. For storage vendors, the SME is a new battle front as winning them would dictate market standing."

Another reason for the IT majors wooing SMEs is that most of them still use direct attached storage (DAS) -- storage that takes back up from individual PCs. Though the numbers for network attached storage (NAS) are rising, DAS accounts for the bulk of SME storage. Secondly, SMEs allow these vendors to get into the volumes business.

No wonder IBM, HP and EMC are increasing their presence in the SME segment. All of them have launched products that cater to the SMEs' needs. The technology used for storage is cutting edge, is easy to use with most of them being plug and play features, and most importantly are cost effective.

Take for instance, EMC, a storage solutions company traditionally catering to the enterprise segment. In early 2005, the company announced its SME focus with the launch of Insignia, an SME focus line. Similarly, IBM and HP too have SME focus storage strategy.

Approximately 30 per cent of HP's total revenues from the storage division comes from the SME segment. Similarly, for IBM close to 40 per cent of its revenues comes from its sales to the SMEs.

Most mid-range products available in the market support a mix of connectivity options, along with enterprise features such as snapshot copy, internal volume copy and replication.

Shailesh Agarwal, country manager, storage IBM said, "We have seen that when it comes to technology the SME do not compromise on IT." Hence most of the storage technology that is being sold to SMEs have features that are latest. In order to tap this market further, IBM is increasing its geographic reach by opening offices in 14 more cities.

For EMC getting into the SME segment was a new experience but it seems to have paid off. "When we started we were a bit unsure but the response we have received showcases that we are on the right path," said Manoj Chugh, country manager, EMC India.

HP's All-in-One range (AIO) also caters to SMEs. These products have features like mirroring for disaster recovery, security and is ready for any upgrades that the operating systems might undergo.

"The AIO range might not be as cheap as a DAS but is certainly gives the user features that are available in high-end storage technology," said Neeraj Matiyani, product manger, storage work division, HP India sales.