Two major storage hot spots that should not be missed in 2005
The storage field, which has always shown a trend of heating up, has always been short of hot spots, but it is precisely this kind of hot spots that have sucked the attention of SIs. From the perspective of 2005, information life cycle management (ILM), iSCSI, SATA, etc. will still be the hot spots in the storage field this year, but we also recommend that you not squeeze in these aspects in a hurry. In fact, there are some areas that we are prone to ignore but are always hot spots, such as storage software and tape backup.
Storage software is becoming more and more popular
Data is the best proof of market and technological development trends. IDC market research data shows that the storage software market grew at a higher rate than network disk storage in the last quarter. Storage software revenue increased by 15% year-on-year to US$2.2 billion in the last quarter. IDC estimates that the annual storage software revenue in 2004 reached US$7.9 billion, an increase of 16.1% over 2003. Although backup software is still the largest part of the network storage software market, storage resource management (SRM) and replication software are the fastest growing areas. Compared with the same period last year, SRM software's growth rate in the last quarter was 19.7%; replica software increased by 14.2% year-on-year. Backup and archive software grew by 9.5% year-on-year.
Bill North, head of storage software market research at IDC, said that the software market is growing rapidly due to the need to manage more complex and changing storage environments and the implementation of more mature backup technologies.
EMC and VERITAS are facing tit for tat, and the two companies are having a lot of fun in acquisitions and mergers (M&A). But both manufacturers accounted for more than half of the storage software market, both of them last year or last quarter.
In the fourth quarter of last year, EMC took the lead with 31.7%, while VERITAS was 21.7%. In 2004, EMC was the first in the market, with a share of 30.9%, and VERITAS ranked second with 21.9%.
EMC has spent $3 billion on the research and development of its software product portfolio and launching market offensives. EMC claims it is the market leader in SRM and replication software. IDC data shows that the company's SRM and replication software market shares are 55.2% and 43.4% respectively.
The EMC software market growth rate reached 25.1%, exceeding the overall market growth rate. IBM's growth rate was 16.7%, making it the only manufacturer in the fourth quarter that the market exceeded its average growth rate except EMC. In contrast, IDC data shows that IBM's hardware sales are slightly insufficient. In terms of the hardware market, IBM ranks fourth, accounting for 8.2%, almost the same as its 8.1% market share in the previous quarter.
VERITAS is also a new force in the storage software market. The company's sensational $13.5 billion follow-up move to Symantec's acquisition is expected to end in the middle of the year.
VERITAS' revenue increased by 11.4% in the quarter. Although VERITAS's overall storage software market share fell from 22.4% in the previous quarter to 21.7% in the current quarter, it still ranked first in the backup software market with a 40% share. VERITAS also occupies the highest market share in the file system software market with a market share of 56%.
Faced with the increasingly complex and higher performance storage environment needs, enterprises fully realize that increasing investment in hardware cannot solve all problems. Enterprises want to make greater use of existing storage device resources, which is one of the factors that have increased demand for storage software. Gartner, a city research company, believes that the ratio of enterprise storage hardware overhead to storage management overhead (including personnel costs, software, etc.) is 1:3. Market demand is the goal of storage suppliers.
The main problem facing users now is how to quickly and effectively implement data backup and archive. For Chinese companies, potential regulatory compliance needs in the future are just as important as data backup protection required for current companies' daily operations. Storage management runs through all aspects of storage. In short, storage software needs to implement: data sharing, seamless expansion, real-time backup, fault-tolerant technology, system monitoring, capacity usage monitoring, remote data backup, disaster recovery and other functions.
In addition, users are concerned about the compatibility issue of storage devices, and there is only one solution: open system storage! Interoperability support between different storage manufacturers is one of the important development trends in storage software that we have seen. In addition, storage management in the traditional sense is hardware-based management and lacks predictability. The emergence of storage virtualization software is an important part of the evolution of the storage market.
Interoperable software technology for users will help reduce the complexity and difficulty of enterprise storage network management, and is one of the important means for users to ensure the return on investment in storage overhead. Important companies in the storage field such as EMC, IBM, Hitachi, etc. all regard software as the key direction for future development. Manufacturers also seem to understand that virtualization is actually not a product concept at all, but a capability that can bring benefits to users, such as reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO), realizing standardized management, etc.
IBM recently released its 2005 storage market strategy, the most critical of which is to simplify infrastructure and manage information lifecycle through software. The goal of infrastructure simplification is to reduce the total cost of ownership while increasing the return on investment, helping enterprises to integrate dispersed storage resources and provide a unified strategic view of the data they own. At the same time, advanced management can better break the complexity of storage management. Yu Bokun, general manager of Greater China, IBM Storage Systems Division, believes: "This year, IBM will introduce integration, virtual and automated management in the three core areas of infrastructure simplification, and will launch new solutions."
Regarding the emergence of information life cycle management, Yu Bokun said that it will make the storage and data match the value of the data, achieving the maximum return on investment for the enterprise, and managing the entire process from creation to removal of information through a strategy-based method to reduce management costs. In addition, access to data anytime, anywhere can improve productivity and responsiveness to changes. The information management cycle goes through the process from generation, protection, access, migration and demise. In this process, IBM will launch new solutions for five key links, including hierarchical storage management, content management, email archiving, application archiving and regulatory compliance. It is worth mentioning that the storage software plays a considerable role in the solution of these key links.
The storage management software market is undercurrent. According to IDC data, the global storage management software market size was approximately US$5.5 billion in 2000. In the next few years, this part of the market will grow at an average annual growth rate of 14.3%, and by 2005, it is expected to reach US$10.71 billion. In China, the annual growth rate in recent years will reach 38.6%, and the market size will reach US$135 million from US$26.46 million in 2000.
Is the tape dead?
Enterprises' demand for data backup always increases at a geometric proportion as business develops. Especially after many experiences of catastrophic events around the world, the demand for data storage has grown unprecedentedly. More and more enterprises need to perform regular secure storage backups of their data to prevent data loss and mitigate the impact of system crashes.
In the field of data storage, there are generally two major uses: one is information sharing, and the other is large-capacity data backup and archive. For the former, disks are the right media, while the latter requires removable media and at a lower price, tapes are the most suitable in this regard. Therefore, the advantages of tape storage make it an irreplaceable device in data backup, disaster recovery and massive data storage, and is also indispensable in major storage architectures such as NAS and SAN. At present, the tape market is in rapid growth, and its importance and advantages in data storage have attracted more and more people's attention, and its development speed is the fastest among storage products. IDC predicts that by 2005, the market investment will increase to 1.3 million units, with a market capacity of more than US$3.5 billion. At the same time, IDC predicts that in the Asia-Pacific region, the growth of the tape market will remain at around 16% by 2005, and in terms of LTO alone, the growth will reach 46%.
With its many advantages such as high reliability, low unit storage price, and convenient capacity expansion, tape storage has become an effective method to solve the problem of enterprise data storage. Internationally, developed countries led by the United States attach great importance to tape storage backup technology and make full use of it. The connection between servers and tape storage devices has reached more than 60%. In China, less than 15% of servers are connected to backup devices, which means that more than 85% of the data in servers are at risk of being completely damaged at any time. In such an environment, tape storage has become the focus of attention of users and manufacturers.
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Explosive demand brings attractive benefits, and the attraction of interests creates a battle for manufacturers in this field. The long-term competition in the storage market has formed a complex pattern in which a variety of technical formats coexist and each occupys the corresponding market. Currently, the most popular mainstream formats in the tape market include DDS, DLT, AIT, LTO and their upgraded versions S-DLT, S-AIT, etc. They occupy the market with related needs with their respective characteristics and advantages.
Among various formats, the DDS format with the longest development history and the largest market share is the DDS format with 4mm DAT technology. The advantages of low cost, high reliability, large market base, and high user acceptance make it the "price-performance king" of the low-end market, mainly occupying the backup market with storage capacity below 20G.
LTO is linear open tape. It is a "open format" technology. The format combines the advantages of linear multi-channel and bidirectional tape formats. Its famous Ultrium storage format has the characteristics of large capacity and fast speed. What's more amazing is that each generation of its products is three times that of the previous generation in terms of performance and speed. It has considerable development potential and is highly favored in the high-end market with capacity of more than 100G.
The format dispute over tape storage has been around for a long time, and this seems to be entanglement between manufacturers often causes trouble to users. From the initial selection of formats to the actual use process, various incompatibility will make users embarrassed, especially the procurement of high-consumables such as tape media. Since drivers and tape media in different formats cannot be compatible with each other, users must purchase corresponding tapes for drives of different formats. This procurement process requires considerable knowledge, energy and time. For enterprises, this means an increase in usage cost. In this case, the market needs to have a manufacturer that can simultaneously provide tape media in all mainstream formats and ensure the high reliability of such compatible products. To meet such requirements, manufacturers must have considerable strength in the research and development, production, technology, quality and other aspects of tape products, and can gain the recognition of developers of various formats in the industry with sufficient influence.
For example, HP, compared with 2003, HP's LTO shipments increased by 35%, tape media shipments increased by 40%, and automatic loading tape drives for the low-end market also increased by 32%.
Bob Wilson, general manager of HP's global nearline storage product department, predicts that LTO shipments will grow rapidly in recent years and DLT-S shipments will remain flat. By 2008, LTO's factory shipments will be 4:1 than SDLT's shipments, which will account for about 80% of the high-end drive market share.
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