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Storage purchases to drop by 75% in Asia-Pacific

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: A recent research by Gartner reveals that 75 per cent of the

corporations in Asia Pacific region do not expect to embark on any major storage

purchases in 2002. The report also confirms the same state in the Indian market,

as 74.5 per cent of organizations have no plans for any major storage purchases.

In simple words the research says that Storage vendors will face tough market

conditions this year.

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An official release says that a phenomenal increase in storage shipments over

the past couple of years (a rate that is unsustainable) has resulted in an

over-adoption and under-utilization of storage capacities. The finding results

from a study of 850 organizations in Asia/Pacific conducted by Gartner in

September 2001. "There are a number of reasons why companies won't be

embarking on any major storage purchases this year, namely the economic downturn

and resulting budgetary constraints and storage under-utilization," said

Gartner Dataquest Asia Pacific research director for servers and storage, Phil

Sargeant.

According to Gartner, vendors should take note of the differing levels of

storage utilization both regionally and at the country level. "The levels

of utilization rates vary significantly from country to country across the

region," said Sargeant. "India for example, has one of the highest

utilization rates at 62.5 per cent. Conversely, China has one of the lowest

rates, at 50.4 per cent, due primarily to a lack of available tools to guide

companies on how to use storage effectively." In India, the leading storage

vendor perception is tilted towards vendors offering total solutions.

Hewlett-Packard was the preferred storage vendor in India followed by Compaq and

IBM.

In comparison, Gartner's study found that server purchase programs are still

steady, with 34 per cent of all respondents indicating that they would be

embarking on major server purchasing this year. "Despite long-term

indications that storage spending would overtake server spending, there appears

to be more momentum in the server market today," said, Gartner Asia/Pacific’s

Principal Analyst for Hardware Platforms, Matthew Boon. "This is clearly a

positive message for the region's major server players, particularly as most

respondents indicated that they would acquire storage from the traditional

server providers," added Boon.

Gartner India analyst for PC's, Servers and Workstations, Vinod Nair,

commented, "India is an emerging market and as such it will be some time

before end-users start considering issues like server consolidation, which is

gaining interest in other matured markets." Nair further observed, "In

their server and storage acquisition plans, Indian organizations have rated

factors such as functional capabilities and compatibility with legacy systems as

more important than price."

The Gartner report found that while recent times have seen the emergence of

significant local vendors from a product and market share perspective in both

the server and storage arenas, users still see multinationals as the vendors of

choice in most countries of the Asia/Pacific region, with the strongest

preference for Compaq, HP and IBM.

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