Nice article about Storage/SANs/fibre channel from an analyst at Bank of America:
Bank of America Report Sees
Growth in Storage Management
Software Market
(Last updated 12:06 PM ET March 22)
SAN FRANCISCO (BUSINESS
WIRE) - The Storage Management
Software market will continue to
grow rapidly in coming years driven by explosive growth of
mission-critical data and the rapid adoption of the Internet,
according to a technology industry research report released by
Bank of America analysts.
The research finds that a collection of key technologies has
enabled this growth and will support it over a relatively long
horizon. "These range from the ever-reducing cost of disk
capacity, to the use of Redundant Array of Independent Discs
(RAID) systems for mission-critical storage, and onto the future
adoption of Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Fibre Channel,"
said Pierr Johnson, industry analyst with the Bank of America
Technology Group.
However, this growth will not be distributed evenly across
platforms and environments. The report states that the high-end
Unix, and Windows 2000 sectors will display the highest rates of
growth. An outcome of this development will be the critical need
for systems management at large. Both systems management suite
developers and point solutions providers will have a meaningful
role to play in the complex hardware and software system that
comprise a SAN.
Yet Johnson cautions that the broad scope and complexity of
SAN solutions, as with any major technology change, will take
time to fully implement and will see its share of conflicts in
standards. Indeed, with this complexity in mind, hardware and
software vendors are increasingly offering total SAN solutions to
minimize conflict and foster adoption. "Focused participants are
already selling established products to those early adopters that
now require the benefits SANs and Fibre Channel offer, said Jim
Mac Gregor, a managing director of the Bank of America
Technology Group
For Storage Management business in particular, there is a
well-defined role for "point solutions" or "best-of-breed"
applications. The need to manage and store data in these systems
environments is increasing at a very fast rate, one that is to a
degree masked by a significant decline in the absolute cost of
storage.
With the increasing prevalence of Data Warehousing and Data
Mining applications, many companies require the increased
functionality offered by storage management solutions providers.
The need to rapidly back-up or replicate data by the terabyte
demands it. This need will only intensify in coming years, says
Johnson.
The report concludes that server and storage systems
consolidation, viewed by many as the prime driver of Storage
Area Network technology, will increase management requirements
even more, as IT managers seek better ways to manage and
economize on the storage of date.
Bank of America, with $618 billion in total sales, is the largest
bank in the United States, with full-service consumer and
commercial operations in 22 states and the District of Columbia.
Bank of America provides financial products and services to 30
million households and 2 million businesses, as well as international
corporate financial services for transactions in 190 countries. Bank
of America stock (ticker: BAC) is listed on the New York, Pacific
and London stock exchanges and certain shares are listed on the
Tokyo Stock Exchange.
For a copy of the report, contact Alistair Hoehne at
704/388-2669. |
