Enterprise Storage
The Midmarket Takes to Storage
Its a good time to be a bargain-basement storage shopper. Sophisticated features like data replication and snapshot copying, which at one time were only available to IT administrators willing to shell out the big bucks for systems like an EMC Symmetrix, have now migrated down to the midrange. This is one of the reasons research firm International Data Corp. identifies the storage midmarket as a growth area. According to IDC researcher Eric Sheppard, worldwide external disk storage systems that cost between $50,000 and $150,000 are expected to grow from 20.7 percent of total sales in 2002 to about 25.4 percent in 2006. In addition, growth for disk arrays that cost less than $50,000 is projected to go from 36.91 percent in 2002 to 43.88 percent in 2006. “On one side its good that all the system technology has matured,” said Tony Ferrante, vice president of sales at Computer Design and Integration, Teterboro, N.J. “But at the same time, I can see it making it more difficult for people to sell. The competition is getting stronger because you are getting more players coming into the market as well.”
Read the full story on:ChannelWeb
Rapidly Falling Storage Costs Enable Bigger Databases, New Applications
As disk drives get cheaper, databases are getting bigger, which is enabling companies to do things they couldnt do a few years ago, according to Richard Winter, president of Winter Corp., a consulting shop that specializes in very large database installations. Winter, who periodically surveys his customers about the size of their databases, estimates that the largest commercial databases in use today are in the range of 50 terabytes. Based on what his clients are telling him, by next year that figure could climb to around 75 terabytes. “With commercial databases the ratio of total storage to actual data is about five to one, on average,” he said. That means that typically only one fifth of the disk space is being used for the actual database. The rest goes to indexing, mirroring. or free space for growth of the database.
Read the full story on:Enterprise Storage Forum
Personal Storage
SanDisk Introduces New Memory Stick for 3G Phones
SanDisk Corp. last week introduced the SanDisk Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick PRO Duo flash memory cards to expand its Memory Stick product line. The two new Memory Stick Duo cards are designed to fit into electronic devices such as 2.5G and 3G mobile phones. These mobile phones require greater storage capacity for their storage-intensive features such as digital cameras, video capture and playback, digital audio players, games, and messaging capabilities. SanDisk expects to begin shipping the cards in September.
Read the full story on:3G Newswroom
Storage Business
Analysts See 2003 Revenue Growth in Hard Disk Market
The hard disk drive industry is returning to revenue growth in 2003, according to a new report from iSuppli Corp. The market watcher expects hard disk and optical drive markets will only grow about 3.5 percent each on a compound basis through 2007. While unit growth is strong in both sectors, iSuppli expects continued price declines based on growing consumer sales of hard drives and increasing competition from Taiwan and China OEMs in optical drives. Hard disk makers saw sales fall 18 and 9 percent and average selling prices (ASP) drop 15 and 18 percent in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Hard drive ASPs will dip a more modest 3.9 percent this year, iSuppli predicts.
Read the full story on: EE Times