"Utility computing is not taking off as expected"

Paul Giroux, vice president - Storage Business Operations, Sun Microsystems Inc., elaborates on the various aspects of the storage scene in India and abroad. Excerpts from his conversation with Ashwini R and Idhries Ahmad:

Do you see utility computing catching up with enterprises?

Paul Giroux: Utility computing is when customers pay only for the space they use. From the storage perspective, it isn't really taking off as expected. If you take an example from the banking sector, ICICI Bank and the Bank of America will not be comfortable placing their data on the same hard disk.

The reason for this is mostly non-security - there is a perceived risk to security when it comes to sharing critical data. It's going to take some time for people to feel confident enough to put their storage in a shared environment.

We have many customers using utility and grid computing. But in the end, people are still buying storage and keeping it separate, simply because they want to separate it out. Sharing storage among companies has not yet become acceptable; very few are actually willing to do that, although it is highly practicable and cost-effective.

How are the SMBs placed in the utility computing scene?

PG: The SMB market here is different from the rest. These businesses are buying storage as a service as opposed to buying storage separately. Also, they are more willing to invest in utility computing as it is cost-effective for them.

For them, sharing critical data with others on a single hard drive isn't as much a bother as spilling out chunks of money on individual storage solutions.

On a general note, everyone, including the SMBs, is now serious about Storage Resource Management (SRM), because ultimately, it is a cost structure.

Moving on to a general scenario, what is your take on India as a storage market?

PG: Here, it is all about scaling, performance and smart budgeting. This is a place for software, mostly. There are tonnes of software built here. Such initiatives will lead to advanced technologies in future, which will in turn change the economics of business altogether. In this regard, India is definitely a strategic, emerging storage market for the rest of the world.

Although storage hasn't changed dramatically over the years in India, it is set to, in the coming days. Thinking futuristically, there will be more computing power, with storage built more and more on the chip and not on the motherboard. You will be buying application time on a subscription basis.

'Tape versus disk' continues to stir up debate among the storage community. How do you see this contention? Is tape really a dead entity?

PG: Only a few say tape is dead. However, I haven't heard of a single customer who says it is. The reality is that storage is building rapidly, retention period is growing and cost is escalating at an accelerated pace. The only economical way to manage all these is through tape. People don't buy disk as cost is a major issue - in particular, the cost of power is massive.

So, according to me, tape is still the most economical way of doing storage. It isn't dead, at least not as yet.

What are the trends in storage - in India and abroad?

PG: As I said, SRM is fast catching up. The high-end storage market is pretty flat. But the mid-range market is exploding. The NAS (Network Attached Storage) market is exploding as well. In fact, NAS is the easiest way to place storage, but it is also the most complex and the most expensive.

Virtualization is an important area for efficiently managing storage consolidation and data protection. With Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) doing the rounds today, one of the big things we are going to look at in future would be Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM).

We are going to open-source everything - this is another mega trend.

Which Indian sectors is Sun currently targeting? Are there any new products in the offing?

PG: We have a very aggressive storage growth plan for India, as the market is growing rapidly. We've always been placed number one or number two in storage business here. We intend to keep that position going and lead the pack. Globally, we've led the tape storage market for many years and still do so.

Though we don't have any new product specifically for India, we conduct a lot of investigation here before launching anything new.

On a global scale, we will be launching a lower-end array (currently 6240 array from the Modular series is very expensive) by the end of this quarter.

MB Sam, Director, Marketing, Sun Microsystems Inc., elaborates on Sun's plans for India:

MB Sam: Sun enjoys storage market space in the telecom and banking sectors in India. The other important ones, of course, are the IT and the ITeS industries, wherein Sun has become the default development platform for storage solutions. In fact, the BPOs are keen on having multiple user databases, and it is here that we see a huge application of storage.

Content is becoming very important. Also, we are coming up with a lot of creative solutions for data warehousing.

Another major area is e-governance, which is emerging in almost all the states. While going the e-way, the first thing the governments look for is storage. This is another area we are taking advantage of.

In terms of headcount, right now, we stand at 1,400 for the whole of India (1,200 developers and 200 sales, marketing, support executives). This will be raised in consonance with market growth.

CIOL Bureau