Y2K effect on storage market
Here is my 2 cents into the discussion. Over the weekend I posted my thoughts about the data storage industry but I will restate my observation based on my experiences as a high-level IT consultant to multiple multi-billion organizations.
1. As far as I can tell Y2K budgets are established until at least the middle of the year 2000 (so that any issues pertaining to the first 6 months can be addressed)
2. I understand the discussion about freeze. However, I speak to a large number of IT people and never hear that companies are not going to add storage and or servers. I heard that companies are not going to deploy new systems during the latter part of the year but to extrapolate from that that companies are not deploying PCs, servers, storage, network drops has not been my experience.
3. There is a large issue with archiving data to tape and the ease of retrieving data from tape, etc. The prices are such that it is becoming less expensive to archive on low cost storage. This will create another wave of storage usage. Just think about the fact that the storage subsystem will be capable of deciding (based on usage) what data to move from the most expensive, fastest storage to the least expensive, cheapest storage. This concept is almost here and will be a major improvement over the current archiving process. So there is going to be a useful life to older generation of storage which will encourage enterprises to purchase new storage and to migrate older, slower storage to the “archived” data.
4. I have been in many discussions where storage policies for enterprises were discussed. It is a very complicated subject which is not easily resolved and that is why you see such storage growth. I don't think that it will change just because of Y2K (do you think that users care?)
5. Many enterprises are migrating from the “CPU centric model” to “Information centric model”. These models put information, and information availability, at the heart of the enterprise. Who do you think will be the winner of the trend? Companies such as EMC are an obvious answer…
6. The world is moving toward a model of “information available anywhere, anytime”. Again, companies with highly reliable solution are the winners of that trend. As soon as companies have problems with information (either unavailable or lost) they call an EMC like company (and there aren't too many such solutions)
So, to make a long story short, I am doubtful that this “Y2K slowdown” is a major threat to a company like EMC. It is a much bigger issue for ERP vendors than to a company such as Dell or EMC.
Thanks Dov
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