|
Founded in 1979, Seagate was the first company to build 5.25-inch hard disc drives for the PC. Rajesh Khurana, country manager of Seagate India, shares his views on the storage industry in a chat with Bhaskar Hazarika of CyberMedia News
What are the drivers of storage networking?
 Gartner expects the total Indian enterprise IT spending, including hardware, software, telecommunications and IT services, to reach Rs 1093 billion in 2006 growing at a CAGR of 20.8 per cent from 2004 to 2009. In addition to this rise in amount of data that organisations need to manage, whether it is in standalone desktops, secondary data storage, or storage over a network, is increasing manifold. So, the main driver is the need for high-capacity drives to ensure the digital data storage. Coupled with this are the heightened security challenges that necessitate disaster recovery planning, quick data retrieval, etc. all placing additional pressure on the capacity and through-put of data storage networks.
How is India contributing to the growth in the storage industry?
India is currently experiencing an economic boom, thus the market trends are of very healthy growth. A Gartner report anticipates India to have an annual enterprise ICT spending growth rate (AGR) of 23 per cent in 2006, with Rs 739 billion being spent on telecommunication services and equipment (a 27 per cent increase over 2005), Rs 172 billion spent on hardware (a 13 per cent increase over 2005), Rs 141 billion on IT services (a 22 per cent increase over 2005) and Rs 41 billion on software (a 17 per cent increase over 2005).
According to MAIT, PC sales crossed 12 lakh (1.2 million) in the April-June quarter this year and the pattern is expected to continue into the third quarter. It expects desktop sales in FY 2006-`07 to cross the 5.6 million mark. However, there are other markets – CE, Gaming, Security, replacement and external, all of which are beginning to become active in India.
What are the data storage products being offered to small and medium businesses?
SME’s are well known as one of the largest consumers of IT in the current scenario. Mirra Server is a product that we are targeting at SMBs. The Mirra Sync and Share Personal Media Server primarily target SOHO and small business users that desire reliable, automatic network backup, secure file synchronization between multiple employees (or customers) and data sharing among co-workers at both local or remote locations over the Internet.
In terms of HDDs, there is very little variance between the products suited for large and small. HDDs are chosen based on the specific purpose for which they will be used, and on the price performance parity. Some of the newer technologies that are currently attracting interest are:
Perpendicular recording system is replacing 50-year-old longitudinal recording. New 1.8-inch product will be launched with perpendicular recording in early next year.
Another important development from an SME perspective has been the introduction of Full Disc Encryption. Seagate's new Momentus 5400 FDE hard drive uses hardware-based Full Disc Encryption (FDE) to provide strong data protection and requires only a user key to encrypt all data, not just selected files or partitions, on the drive.
How are data storage needs of devices like mobile phones, cameras, etc. driving the data storage market?
At the time of its golden anniversary, the hard drive is at the center of a world fueled by digital content, providing users with anywhere, anytime access to their content on devices ranging from PDAs, PCs and iPods to super-slim cell phones and digital video recorders.
© CyberMedia News
|
