BANGALORE: Digitalization of work at business places has resulted in a sort of data explosion where businesses today need to think of advanced storages systems to store their data. In this scenario, IT vendors are coming up with a host of new storage solutions to enable businesses to go ahead without having to bother about data loss.

What are these new technologies that are are catching up with businesses today. H.L.Phalachandra, director, Symmetrix Software, EMC India Center of Excellence says businesses need to be choosy about technologies when it comes to storage, as different technologies cater to different class of business. Excerpts from an interview.

CIOL: How serious do you think is the issue of data explosion with enterprises today ?

H. L. Phalachandra: Data Explosion or exponential data growth with the rapidly expanding digital universe is definitely a serious issue today. As per IDC reports, we are adding hundreds of Exabytes of data every year, and are poised to cross two Zetabytes of data by 2011. Organizations which understand how fast the digital universe is expanding, and manage their businesses accordingly, will be the ones that can compete cost-effectively and win in the next decade.

CIOL: What kind of storage environments is gaining prominence among enterprises?

HLP: Enterprises today are challenged in terms of expanding data storage requirements. There is also the unclear market visibility and shrinking budgets. In this scenario, storage environments which provide increased price/performance benefits, while having the ability to support increasing demands on performance and availability, would be gaining prominence.

CIOL: With respect to SMBs, how affordable are these new storage technologies?

HLP: Generically,  SMB storage requirements are at a different scale as compared to an enterprise. So, some of the technologies may be more suitable/affordable for larger enterprises today (eg Flash Drives), where as others are already available or are in the works to be available at reasonable price points now. As these technologies become more prevalently used and grows in volumes, even those features which look like more suitable for enterprise today would fit into SMB context.
 
CIOL: Which are the storage technologies that can be a hit in 2009 ?

HLP: Flash (SSD) Drives and Automatic Tiering of Storage disks, Data Protection in terms of backup and recovery, Data De-duplication, Virtualization and other Greener Storage technologies etc. are the ones to watch.

CIOL: How far, do you think, can the economic slowdown make an impact on enterprises adopting new technologies during 2009?

HLP: Economic slowdown would hasten focused adoption of technologies. Those technology features which play into the current environment are:

• Increasing utilization of the existing infrastructures through Thin provisioning/Data De-Duplication etc.
• Increasing storage capacity in a cost effective way through Tiered Storage.
• Supporting ease of consolidation through data migration.
• Addressing global challenges needing efficient Disaster Recovery, Security with focus on integrity and protection of Data through efficient/simpler backup and restoration technologies, Security of the data.
  Green IT.