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Storage
Networking- No Economical Upturn, But a Change in the Architectural Landscape
Santa Barbara,
California - August 27, 2002 - Overall 2002 storage revenues will not see any
significant upturn, according to a report published by Peripheral Concepts,
Inc.
In calendar year 2002, a number of companies will show a
lower revenues than 2001 just because their first half of 2001 was still very
strong. But storage networking is suffering less than the rest of the industry.
SAN and NAS systems, software and components are expected to grow about 20%,
while the overall storage system revenue will only reach in 2002 its 2000 level
of $24 Billion, as shown in the following table |
| Storage
spending in Billions of US dollars: source
Peripheral Concepts, Inc. |
|
1998
|
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
| DAS
|
17.2 |
18.4 |
18.8 |
16.5 |
15.3 |
14.3 |
13.1 |
| NAS
|
0.4 |
0.8 |
1.7 |
2.3 |
3 |
4 |
5.2 |
| SAN
|
0.8 |
2 |
4 |
4.7 |
5.8 |
7.5 |
9.8 |
| Total
|
18.4 |
21.2 |
24.5 |
23.5 |
24.1 |
25.8 |
28.1 | |
The
economy slump has not hindered designers ability to innovate. The past eighteen
months have seen a surge in the number of well funded start-ups; over one
hundred companies are identified in the report.
"New
technological advances are about to completely change the landscape of storage
networking. No vendor can ignore this movement, as some of the technologies that
seemed promising last year may end up being stop-gap short term solutions"
says Farid Neema, president of Peripheral Concepts, Inc. and author of the
report The most significant advances are happening in three areas that may
overlap.
First is a family of new hybrid devices that combine the
functions of a server, a multi-protocol low latency switch, and a virtualization
engine. They are called intelligent/routing switches, appliances, or global
controller. They may end up to be the best vehicle to fulfilling the convergence
of SAN and NAS. The second area of major changes is in data acceleration
techniques, involving parallel processing combined with grand scale silicon
implementations. Thirdly, come virtualization and aggregation engines which are
overcoming some of the most serious shortcomings of NAS and SAN.
SAN and NAS continue to offer a very strong market opportunity,
concludes this report that covers major technologies, applications, revenues and
market shares. The report titled
"SAN and
NAS- Infrastructure, Products and Market Opportunities" contains 400
pages and costs $2,895. It identifies over 50 companies that are leading the
development of SAN and NAS. Characteristics of over 40 products are detailed in
feature matrices that allow comparison. ...Peripheral Concepts profile | |
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STORAGEsearch.com will be a
media sponsor for Storage Visions 2003
editor:- August 27, 2002 - the mouse
site, STORAGEsearch.com, will be a media sponsor for Storage Visions
2003 which will be held in January 7-8, 2003 at Las Vegas, Nevada. This
conference will focus on content creation, content distribution, content
reception, and data storage. The organisers are currently looking for
additional speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors for the 2003 two day event. If
you're interested phone 805 898-3845, or email
info@storagevisions.com. |
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He who hesitates is lost -
when it comes to securing the best web advertising slots
Publisher
- August 23, 2002 - many marketers still seem to have problems in understanding
that web advertising slots are a finite resource, like seats on a plane. That's
because the average number of pages that a reader will see are fixed by average
reader behaviour and the portal's format. Although readership in a long
established portal may still vary 10 to 20% from month to month according to
market changes, publishers like us, already have more than six years of web
traffic to analyze and we've taken account of those seasonal trends in our
capacity availability forecasts.
OK somethimes we get things wrong,
for example September 2001 was a low point for computer portals because economic
activity in the US ceased for several weeks following 9/11. But generally we've
got a pretty good idea of what capacity it's safe to sell looking ahead two to
three months. In fact we presell most of our projected capacity upto one year
ahead.
Print publications on the other hand have no problems in dealing
with extra advertisers. They just add more pages. The result can be to dilute
the promotion efforts of all the advertisers who were unlucky enought to feature
in those bloated editions.
It's because web advertising (which works)
is such a highly demanded item, that marketers can't afford to hesitate before
booking ad slots. Many of my email dialogs about advertising look something like
this.
Marketing manager:- "please tell me the availability of
targeted advertising in SAN slots."
Me:- "sorry, all that
capacity has already been sold years ago to current advertisers, who renew and
reorder all increased capacity year after year. But I can offer NAS instead."
A
week or so later, same marketing manager:- "I'd like to follow up that NAS
thing you were talking about."
Me:- "sorry, since your last
email, someone else has already ordered that for the next 3 months. There is
another another option I can offer which is targeted on articles which discuss
NAS and SAN, and also iSCSI. How does that sound?"
A week or so
later, same marketing manager:- "I'd like to follow up on those
alternatives you were talking about."
Me:- "sorry, those have
gone now as well. Sold them yesterday."
Marketing manager:- "OK,
well maybe I'll just have to try some run of site banner advertising. I'd like
100,000 impressions starting next week."
Me again:- "sorry,
this is a busy period, and all our projected run of site banner advertising has
been sold next month, and the month after. I can offer you something in two to
three months."
Marketing manager:- "we don't plan our web
promotion that far ahead."
Me again:- "sorry, but it's very
rare for us to have unsold capacity in the short term horizon. If you don't plan
ahead, it's likely you'll never be able to buy advertising on our web sites. Let
me explain, it's because current advertisers are guaranteed that they can renew
their ad slots with a built in growth factor, and that's exactly what most of
them do."
End of conversation...
The moral of this story
is that if you're offered an advertising slot by a major portal, then you should
accept it without delay, because otherwise you may have to wait months or years
for the same opportunity to repeat. Of course you can always find other portals
which have masses of unsold capacity. But the most likely reason for that is
because they are new and don't have the readership you want, or it could be they
have a high advertiser churn rate because their advertising products just don't
work. When new subjects are added to an old portal there's always an opportunity
to grab desirable ad slots. However that's measured in hours, not days. |
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Why Good Sites Lack Search
Engines
August 22,
2002 - an article today in SearchDay reports on a survey of 1,600
webmasters who don't implement search-engines on their site. Time and
complexity were the most frequently cited reasons. ...Searchenginewatch.com
Editor's
comments:- our own experience with STORAGEsearch
and the SPARC Product Directory
(computer sites which attract over 700,000 unique readers) is that in a well
structured directory, less than 10% of readers resort to using the search-engine
facility. My own view about this is that readers can get to better information
from contextually related links which are placed on each page. The links are
modified from time to time according to changes in the market.
As a
publisher, I find that the onsite search-engine statistics are a very useful
editorial tool. If readers can't find what they want easily from the directory
links they'll use the search-engine instead. I then go back to edit the
relevant pages to ensure that the most common search terms appear as links. |
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Investment Grade Domains to
be Sold by Sealed Bid
DENVER, CO - August 21, 2002 -
Syndicate Advertising, LLC, an Internet advertising and marketing
company, today announced the opening of InvestmentGradeDomains.com,
where the company expects to carve a selective niche out of the burgeoning
domain name industry. Their plan is to focus exclusively on high-end
properties.
The new website's offerings are unarguably rare in today's market. The
initial listings include the power names UnitedStatesOfAmerica.com,
KingdomOfSaudiArabia.com and WANTED.COM - all of which are scheduled for sale by
sealed bid in October.
By the heyday of the mid-nineties it appeared that all the "good
names" were taken. In fact, most of those names could still have been
purchased from the speculators and small businesses that initially registered
them. Today, more and more of the quality names are working their way up the
corporate ladder to mega companies that will likely never surrender them. No
longer content with CompanyName.com, companies continue to acquire better, more
generic names. It is this dwindling of supply and increase of demand that is the
energy behind Syndicate Advertising's InvestmentGradeDomains.com.
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Tech-Source Updates Web
Site with Details of Newest Sun Compatible Graphics Cards
Editor -
August 19, 2002 - Tech-Source
has updated its web site to include details of its latest Sun compatible
graphics cards. Like many companies, Tech-Source cut back on its web design
resources during the recession, and as a result, its web site was hopelessly out
of date. In fact most of their new products launched for the Sun market during
the last year, which were listed in the
SPARC Product Directory,
weren't even mentioned on the Tech-Source web site. That problem has now been
fixed. ...Tech-Source
profile |
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Ideas International exceeds
profit forecast and sees sales revenue increase by 15 per cent
SYDNEY,
Australia - August 16, 2002 – Leading Australian IT research firm, Ideas
International Limited (ASX:IDE) today announced a 15 per cent increase in
sales revenue to $4.99 million for the financial year ending 30 June 2002 –
up from $4.34 million on the previous year. The company's total revenue from
all operating activities was $5.10 million. This was an increase of 4 per cent
on the previous year and a record revenue level for IDEAS despite a global
downturn in the IT market. Consolidated profit from ordinary activities before
tax was $362,885.
The company's Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ian Birks,
said: "We are pleased to be able to report above industry-average sales
growth through a sustained focus on maintaining and extending the existing
client base and developing opportunities in key market growth areas. Over 95 per
cent of IDEAS's research subscription customers renewed their annual
subscription contracts during 2002." ...IDEAS International
profile |
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European IT Market Is
Entering Initial Phase Of Recovery, According to IDC's Black Book
LONDON -
August 14, 2002 – According to new Black Book data published by IDC,
IT spending in Western Europe will grow by 4.4% in 2002 compared to 3.4% in
2001. This figure will rise to 6.2% in 2003 but is not expected to return to
the healthy levels of growth seen in 2000 until 2004.
The Western European IT market has suffered a number of major
setbacks over the past two years; first came the dot-com crash and subsequent
repercussions, followed shortly after by the telecommunications slump and
knock-on effect on the hardware market. Adding to these woes, the global economy
then encountered a significant slowdown. Taking all these factors into
consideration, the Western European IT market has proved relatively resilient
and with the exception of the hardware market, all major segments have continued
to grow.
Analysis of historic data illustrates a correlation between GDP growth
and IT growth whereby spending patterns in the IT industry are typically
influenced by fluctuations in the economy. Based on this assumption, a recovery
in IT spending in Western Europe will be largely dependent on the stabilization
of the economy and as such the pace at which IT market conditions improve will
differ across geographies in line with the relative health of each economy. For
example, France and the UK may find it easier to bounce back whereas a rebound
in Germany, where economic conditions have been particularly challenging, could
lag by a few months.
...IDC profile |
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Worldwide Small and Medium
Business Spending on Storage Hardware, Software, and Services Expected to
Surpass $18 Billion in 2006
NEW YORK –
August 14, 2002 – Annual worldwide spending on data storage hardware,
software and services by Small- and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) will undergo
phenomenal growth over the next 4 years, more than quadrupling to $18.5 by 2006,
according to a new report from Access Markets International (AMI) Partners,
Inc. Worldwide SMB storage spending will grow at a compounded rate of
43% over the next 4 years, far outpacing the 5% annual growth rate in large
enterprise storage spending, and positioning the under one thousand employee
segment to be the key contributor to industry growth over this time period. At
this substantial pace, total worldwide SMB spending will increase from just 8%
of the $54 billion storage market today, to 24% of the projected $79 billion
market in 2006.
"As storage vendors seek new avenues for meeting and exceeding
their revenue goals in a challenging economic environment, expanding into the
SMB market is a logical and perhaps necessary step," said Ryan Brock, a
senior consultant with AMI-Partners. "Those competitors that are able to
swiftly and decisively deploy resources and go-to-market strategies that
demonstrate a keen understanding of the SMB space will undoubtedly garner
financial rewards," added Brock.
Over the next 4 years, all of the major global regions are expected to
contribute to outstanding growth in storage solution deployment among SMBs. SMB
markets in Latin America and Eastern Europe, Middle East, & Africa (EMEA)
will experience the highest compounded annual spending growth rate, at 55%,
followed by Asia Pacific at 50%, and North America and Western Europe at 40%.
North America will remain the top market from a total dollar spend perspective,
accounting for roughly 40% of worldwide SMB storage spending, followed by
Western Europe at about 35% and Latin America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA together
accounting for the remaining 25%.
The number of SMBs with some type of networked storage solution, which
includes SAN or NAS, currently stands at 1.5 million and is expected to grow to
almost 6.8 million businesses by 2006. Although this uptake is substantial,
these businesses will represent only 8% of all SMBs across the globe. As such, a
prerequisite for successfully competing in the global SMB storage market will be
the ability to pinpoint these segments and recognize the factors that will lead
these businesses to seek storage solutions.
...AMI-Partners
profile |
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UnitedLinux Announces Beta
Release
LINDON,
Utah, CURITIBA, Brazil, NUREMBERG, Germany, and BRISBANE, Calif. – August
14, 2002 – The UnitedLinux product is the result of an industry
initiative to streamline Linux development and certification around a global,
uniform distribution of Linux designed for the business user. UnitedLinux
will leverage the collective resources of the founding companies, with the end
result designed to provide an unprecedented Linux business infrastructure and
product. With this business focus, the UnitedLinux beta incorporates features
that make it ready for the global enterprise. UnitedLinux will be compliant with
LSB and Li18nux, and will be available in English, Japanese, Simplified and
Traditional Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, and
Hungarian. Benefits of UnitedLinux include:
- A global Linux for the enterprise supported by leading ISVs and IHVs
- Local language and local time zone support for customers around the world
- A channel of more than 16,000 resellers that sell and support UnitedLinux
- A global support team for pre and post sales
...UnitedLinux
Editor's
comments:- Sun Microsystems hijacked the concept of Unix in the 1980s, and made
SunOS (later renamed Solaris) an attractive commercial industrial strength
operating system. But Unix had already been around for over a decade before Sun
did that. Now that Sun is starting to market its own flavor of Linux servers
there's a real concern in smaller software companies that Sun marketers will
hijack Linux too, dislodge them and negate years of market development effort.
That's the reality of a big market, small companies get acquired or
find niches, but rarely have the marketing talent to survive and adapt to the
bigger opportunities which present themselves. One way to view alliances like
UnitedLinux, is as an alliance united against Sun. However Sun will fail in the
Intel Linux market, so the companies already in that space should instead try to
make themselves attractive as takeover targets. |
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Advertising in the SPARC
Product Directory
Editor - August 9, 2002 - after reporting a
readership dip in June and Sun's poor financial results in early July, I'm
pleased to report a sharp upward climb in our readership for the month of July.
July readership showed a 16% year on year increase compared to July last year,
and showed an even bigger increase from June (2002) which was a low point. This
incease is as a result of our better coverage of issues which really matter to
readers.
Looking ahead... I realise from my reader emails that although
the SPARC market has been around for 15 years, many of you are new to this
market and would like a summary guide to help you get a feel for it more
quickly. I'll be publishing one soon which includes market size data, history
and trends in a short easy to digest format.
For would be advertisers.
There has always been more demand for our banner ad capacity than we can supply,
and this year has been no exception. In fact we decline almost as many new
advertisers as we accept. For a limited period we are now able to offer banner
ad capacity to new SPARC advertisers. This is due entirely to the unexpected
upsurge in readership, which after more than 10 years SPARC publishing, took us
a bit by surprise. ...Advertising info |
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MarketingViews | |
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Other news on this page
Storage
Networking- No Economical Upturn, But a Change in the Architectural Landscape
STORAGEsearch.com
will be a media sponsor for Storage Visions 2003
He who hesitates is
lost - when it comes to securing the best web advertising slots
Why
Good Sites Lack Search Engines
Investment Grade Domains to be Sold by
Sealed Bid
Tech-Source Updates Web Site with Details of Newest Sun
Compatible Graphics Cards
Ideas International exceeds profit forecast
and sees sales revenue increase by 15 per cent
European IT Market Is
Entering Initial Phase Of Recovery, According to IDC's Black Book
Worldwide Small and Medium Business Spending on Storage Hardware,
Software, and Services Expected to Surpass $18 Billion in 2006
UnitedLinux
Announces Beta Release
Advertising in the SPARC Product Directory
earlier news (archive) |
|
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Tape Libraries on
STORAGEsearch.com |
| Megabyte
found that the advantage of taped storage was that he could store a huge
amount. But it sometimes took a long time to retrieve what he wanted. | | |
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View from the Hill
A Better Windows than
Windows...
A Better Linux than Linux?
For some
quirky reason Sun Microsystems' launch of their Linux for Intel architecture
systems at
LinuxWorld in mid August, put me
in mind of IBM's marketing push to get their OS/2 into PC's back in the mid
1990's, long after everyone in the PC world realised that the PC OS race was
already over, and had been won by Microsoft.
IBM's phrase "A
Better Windows than Windows" sounded good, and was relatively harmless.
Less harmless, however, was the realization that if you bought a low cost IBM PC
with Windows, then the disk also came packed with OS/2 and a bunch of other
stuff which IBM thought you might find useful, just in case you changed your
mind about which operating system you really wanted to boot up AFTER you had
placed your order. Removing the OS/2 crud to free up disk space, was something
you only did once. Next time you didn't make the mistake of buying an IBM PC.
IBM's marketers at the time padded their "market share" data with
millions of these dual boot, never used copies of the ill fated OS/2.
A
recent Sun press release says that in keynote address to Linux enthusiasts at
LinuxWorld, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said Sun is redefining value in
the low-cost, entry server market with one of the first pre-integrated
enterprise-class systems running Linux.
"There is no reason not to go to Sun for Linux - we've got the
Sun ONE stack, price performance, support and services, scalability and an
upgrade path," Sun CEO Scott McNealy said. "We are part of the Linux
community and will stay committed through sponsorships, donations, and product
deliveries. We're leveraging the Linux opportunity and helping customers at the
same time by bringing enterprise-level support to the open source community."
Sun's entry level x86 server, the Sun LX50, launched a few days
earlier comes preconfigured to run either Solaris or Linux, and the tone of
Sun's statements about their entry into the Linux market are very much along the
lines that you'll get a Better Linux than Linux from Sun.
I didn't
attend LinuxWorld so I don't know if McNealy had his fingers crossed behind his
back, or choked whenever he said something positive about Linux. From Sun's
point of view, this is the operating system which brought rivals HP and IBM back
into the Unix mainframe market long after Sun thought they had already won that
race with Solaris. Sun hoped that Linux would go away, or stay a hobbyist
market, but it didn't. They hoped that Intel, IBM and HP would always stay
behind Sun in the race to produce the fastest processors, but that that didn't
happen either. Then within less than a year of killing Solaris x86 off, and
saying many rude things about Linux, and Intel, Sun has now eaten humble pie and
launched a dual boot Linux/Solaris x86 server.
Who would believe it?
Well... the words "humble" and "Sun" don't fit
together comfortably in the same sentence. No, instead, of eating humble pie,
Sun has decided that it is going to ship a version of Linux which has lots of
proprietary Sun add ons which will make it "better". If you see the
light and change your mind about the Linux thing after placing your order, then
not to worry. You can boot Solaris x86 instead. Somehow, I'm not sure that users
will find it comforting.
Sun's Linux may be "better", but
it's not Linux. Remember the fuss that Sun kicked up in the courts a few years
back? When Microsoft tried to make Java better, by adding Windows and Visual
basic extensions? I think Linux users will be distrustful of Sun's improvements
which are designed to make applications less portable, unless you want to port
over to Solaris. They've already been there with AIX and HP-UX. No thanks.
From
the outside world, Sun's x86 Linux strategy today looks very similar to IBM's
OS/2 strategy in the mid 1990's. Sun would have done better launching these
products a few years ago when its marketing power carried more weight in the
wider computer community. I suspect that most users would feel more comfortable
buying a no-name brand PC installed with Red Hat Linux than a Sun LX50. A Linux
box from Dell will cost less and scale upwards from day one. Or maybe I'm wrong
and should stick to talking about hardware...
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