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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. K. G. who wrote (3033)	4/4/2001 9:20:08 AM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4808

Denis K G, ...AN update from one of the tech watchers... Wednesday April 4, 8:02 am Eastern Time Press Release External Storage Poised for Extraordinary Growth SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 4, 2001--(Peripheral Concepts Inc.) Newer applications and advances in technology are fueling an extraordinary growth in high performance external storage, according to the 2001 edition of the SAN Report released by Peripheral Concepts Inc. With revenues exceeding $30 billion, storage will surpass direct server revenue in 2001. Both SAN and dedicated NAS revenues have more than doubled in 2000. They should triple again by 2003, to reach respective revenues of 14.5 billion and 5.7 billion, as indicated in table 1 below. Six leading vendors cover more than 85% of the market revenue. OPEN SYSTEM SAN AND NAS Disk Shipment Revenues ($ Billion) 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 NAS Dedicated 0.4 0.75 1.7 3.0 4.5 5.7 SAN 0.8 2.0 4.0 7.5 11.5 14.5 Table 1 Fibre Channel switches have played a vital role in the development of SANs. The switch market has grown 5-fold in 2000, and is expected to each $2.9 billion in 2003, in spite of price dropping 30% per year. Each of HBA and router revenue has grown three-fold in 2000, while the hub market has slowed down showing practically no growth from its 1999 revenue. Two companies make 78% of the revenue. Significant progress was accomplished in the implementation of reliable management of SAN. Virtualization has received considerable attention. It plays a key role in solving centralization problem. Virtualization will help fulfill the need for scalability and availability required by less traditional applications such as e-commerce and storage services. ``Services and service providers are about to revolutionize the way storage is distributed and the way vendors interact with their users and channels,'' said Farid Neema, president of Peripheral Concepts Inc. ``A new business model for storage is born.'' The report analyzes the selection criteria a storage service provider applies to product and vendor selection. The total storage management revenue is expected to reach $6 billion by 2003. The share of backup revenue was 64% in 1998 and will decrease to 40% by 2003, while the revenue continues to grow. Storage Resource management is the fastest growing segment. This report analyzes five independent user surveys involving more than one thousand medium and large IT installations, many of which had consolidated storage. A large majority of the sites use several flavors of UNIX, as well as NT platforms. Forty percent of the IT organizations have no plans to deploy a SAN in the foreseeable future, 15% have installed a SAN and another 12% to 15% are in the process of implementing and will have it running in less than one year. Among the barriers to acceptance is the perception that SAN is intrinsically expensive, complex and immature. Just about when dust seemed to be settling after SAN had crossed its life cycle chasm enjoying a year of mainstream deployment, a new significant development is upon us. It is referred to as SAN over IP, IP storage or IP-SAN, and it alludes to the ability to transfer blocks of data over an IP-based SAN configuration. IP-Storage appears today as a potential longer-term competitor to FC SAN, a trend that no vendors can afford to ignore. With strong support from several powerful industry leaders, IP-Storage development stands today where FC was 4 years ago, but its development is likely to be faster than FC. No one can clearly predict how fast things will move, but figure ES-11 and table 2 below indicate the company's best estimate of the trend. The evolution will depend on how fast standards are approved, and the price differential that will exist between the infrastructure of SAN and GbE and 10GbE. As with other nascent technologies, storage-over-IP solutions face major challenges. Putting storage on the IP network raises also the usual difficulties involving standards that must be addressed before storage and networking vendors make it the connection of choice among storage networks. The report identifies companies driving the move to IP-storage. FIBRE-SAN and IP-SAN REVENUE PROJECTION ($ Billion) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 SAN Total 4 7.5 12 14.7 16.6 18 FC-SAN 4 7.5 11.4 13.1 13.7 14 IP-SAN 0 0 0.6 1.6 2.8 4 Table 2 Just like in any major new development, there won't be one technology that fits everyone's needs. There will be complementary technologies that address different market segments. The proper solution will likely differ by application, connectivity requirements, scalability, performance and price sensitivity. Fibre Channel SAN is still in its early development stage, but it has acquired enough momentum to ensure its continued high acceptance rate for the next three years. For any architecture to be successful, it will have to guarantee continuity/integration with Fibre channel. The report contains more than 400 pages. It identifies more than 50 companies that are leading the development of SAN, and are candidate for partnership. Characteristics of nearly 50 products are detailed in Feature matrices that allow product comparison. An Executive summary is available on the Web site. Peripheral Concepts Inc. is a leading consulting firm specializing in storage and storage management. The company profile and the report table of contents can be viewed on the Web at www.periconcepts.com under Reports. Peripheral Concepts Inc. can be contacted by telephone 805/563-9491 or fax 805/563-6020. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact: Peripheral Conepts Inc., Santa Barbara