The predominant storage-related issue at the METAmorphosis 2001 and 2002 conferences was cost control. However, the tone and conversation at the 2003 conference changed back to the forward-looking networked storage deployment theme that had existed prior to the 2002 economic downturn.
META Trend: As networked storage (e.g., SAN, NAS) and storage management (e.g., Fibre Channel fabric managers, storage resource management, SAN management) continue to mature through 2006, larger and more sophisticated implementations (moving away from self-integrated point products) will drive the need for functional storage applications to become application and DBMS aware, exposing immature storage-related security technologies and procedures. Through 2005/06, the value proposition and price emphasis will shift from hardware components to software and services, further separating and forming a storage operations discipline independent of DBMS, systems, and application network management.
Going back to the future may be a cliché, but returning to a development agenda to address future storage needs seemed to be the order of business for attendees at the 2003 METAmorphosis conferences. Although organizations remain cautious in their immediate spending plans, the majority of clients inquired about infrastructure development, not cost-control techniques. Client inquiries revealed a surprising number of organizations with no current storage-area network (SAN) deployments but in the process of planning for them.
Q: Are SANs for real?
A: Although the industry has been discussing SANs for so many years that this question seems blasé, it is certainly legitimate given the current state of SAN deployment. We estimate that only 30% of server-connected data is hosted on a SAN or network-attached storage (NAS), though nearly 60% of Global 2000 organizations have deployed some type of SAN or NAS. Thus, it is safe to conclude that SANs have reached a critical mass and are “for real.”
During 2002, the enterprise storage growth rate slowed to less than 45% net (60% gross, including those made for technology refresh purchases). We expect enterprise storage demand to average 45% net growth through YE04. The majority of capacity demand will be for networked storage. We expect the cross-over point (when more than 50% of storage is networked) to occur in 2005/06. However, the economy of the past three years has retarded SAN/NAS deployment. We now expect a networked storage “build out” (e.g., 75%-80% of storage capacity is networked) to occur in 2008/09.
Although we believe important differences exist between the optimal use of SANs and NAS (see Delta 2090), we concede that there are many gray areas. Moreover, physical SAN and NAS devices (if not the technical differences between them) are converging, at least at the high end (e.g., Network Appliance, EMC; see SIS Delta 975). Because of this device convergence, we believe the deployment of data on a SAN or NAS structure will devolve into a low-level provisioning option by 2004/05 from the architectural decision that it is currently.
Q: How do I justify the purchase of a SAN?
A: SAN vendors frequently seek to justify SAN costs based on three issues:
- Better asset utilization
- Simpler management
- Reduction in labor cost
