Gone are the days when most SMBs had only a limited budget for capital IT purchases. So, they were not interested in buying storage solutions. Today, the market potential is unbelievably high. In fact, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are a segment that worldwide spends an estimated US$234 billion (about Rs.10.53 lakh crore) per year on IT products. Sandeep Dutta, Vice President Storage, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/SA says, “Information infrastructure is projected to double every 18 months. Structured data is growing at 32% (databases for transactional workloads), while unstructured data is growing at 63% (such as user files, medical images, web and rich media content) and replicated data is growing at 49% (including backup, archive, business analysis, discovery and business continuance).  Information and applications boom is happening not only within large organizations but is growing faster in midsize and small businesses.” 

In India also, SMBs are heading towards a data deluge and given the requirements of effective storage, management and retrieval of data storage has assumed the role of a critical IT enabler in today's time.  As per IDC, the Enterprise Storage market in India is expected to witness a double-digit growth. A significant portion of this growth would be contributed by organizations (especially SMB enterprises) in cities other than the top four metros.  

“Overall, we are seeing big growth opportunities in several areas. The biggest trend today we see is a shift towards networked storage. Earlier, most of the SMB customers would use DAS for their environments and networked storage was limited to enterprise datacenters only. With the advent of technologies like iSCSI and FCoE, networked storage has become an attractive option for SMB customers as it offers them better utilization, performance, scalability besides giving them options like remote backup and DR,” says Surajit Sen, Director - Channels, Marketing & Alliances for NetApp India. NetApp, a mid-sized enterprise, forms 30% of the company's business globally.

Today's small businesses are increasingly using technology for business advantage and competitiveness. While storage solutions specifically designed for SMBs have been few, cloud computing and virtualization are catching on in popularity. However, as an evolving solution, there are still concerns that SMBs face in terms of hosting all of their data in the cloud. 

SMB's wants to streamline their communications and operations while deploying more efficient routes to market in order to expand business opportunities. All business decisions today trigger an IT activity and all IT activity results in creation of DATA. "This is one of the primary factors that is driving the increased demand for storage solutions. SMBs are looking to deploy a technology environment that speeds innovation to market at a reduced cost," says Prakash Krishnamoorthy, Country Manager, StorageWorks, HP India. 

The SME segment has come to the forefront in the last few years in India due to several reasons - government thrust towards the segment, increasing business opportunities in a robust economy, domestic demand, opportunities through globalization, rise of tier-2 and 3 cities and towns and momentum in entrepreneurial ventures. As the business and industry has steadily grown, so has competitiveness, which has necessitated increasing use of Information Technologies to drive a business, manage and operate a business, enhance competitiveness and achieve higher efficiency.

Indeed, growing interest in disaster recovery and archiving is driving increased demand for storage solutions among the SMBs. 

Technologies 

Meanwhile, a new generation of more affordable technologies is putting robust solutions, such as iSCSI, storage area network, Virtualization, and even high-end Fibre channel- within their reach. SMBS are finally moving away from seat-of-the-pants management of data storage. In such an environment, there is no shortage of vendors offering storage products tailor-made for SMEs. Vendors from IBM to HP to EMC and smaller players have boosted their SMBs-specific offerings in an attempt to cash in on smaller firms’ increased appetite for storage.

According to Arun Dharmalingam, Regional Manager, Cisco India & SAARC, today's small businesses are increasingly using technology for business advantage and competitiveness. “While storage solutions specifically designed for SMBs have been few, cloud computing and virtualization are catching on in popularity. However, as an evolving solution, there are still concerns that SMBs face in terms of hosting all of their data in the cloud,” says Dharmalingam. 

The pressure to remain competitive is true for all and in every aspect of business. So they need the same technology that the enterprise needs except the scale can be small. Consolidation, Virtualisation, Replication, Data Protection are the technologies that are in demand while dealing the storage issue. “Until recently, these storage solutions were out of an SME's reach, but not anymore. Each of the technology that we offer delivers to the SME technology advantages at compelling prices,” says Prakash. 

Storage Solutions Right for SMBs

At about $35 billion, the size of the storage hardware and services market for solution providers serving clients in the SMB space is mind-boggling. And, there are just as many vendors with storage solutions as there are potential clients ready to snap them up.

EMC's product portfolio for the SMB space offers solutions including backup, recovery and de-duplication, unified storage and virtualization. Avamar, Networker and Data Domain Appliance are the key solutions offered in the backup and de-duplication domain to help improve reliability and restore performance. The low-cost NAS solutions (StorCenter series) which are part of Iomega are a compelling solution for SMEs. 

IBM has invested billions in recent years in storage innovations such as de-dupulication; scale-out storage to support data growth, particularly of unstructured data; and data archiving to prioritize data for workloads like real-time analytics to gain new insights. IBM SAN products and solutions provide integrated SMB and enterprise SAN solutions with multi-protocol local, campus, metropolitan and global storage networking. Cisco's storage technologies portfolio includes a range of business network storage systems with features optimised for small businesses. 

HP specifically designs entry-level solutions to meet the unique storage needs of smaller organizations or departmental offices with limited expertise and funds. HP also provides SMBs with industry-leading technology, services, programs and collaborations that increase efficiencies across their organizations.

Some of the solutions designed for SMEs by HP include HP StorageWorks X1000 Network Storage Systems, HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 Modular Smart Array (MSA) Systems and new HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 MSA Fibre Channel (FC) SAN Starter Kits, the HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Arrays, the HP StorageWorksD2D2000 series, the HP StorageWorks LTO Gen 4 Autoloaders, the HP StorageWorks Storage Mirrorring, the HP StorageWorks Data Proetctor Express. “Each one of them is designed with a simplicity and ease of use that SMEs will simple love it and find it so easy to deploy and manage,” says Prakash.

Safe Bet for VARS

Storage is not a dead-end IT activity. SMBs are realizing they have lot of important data and they cannot afford to lose it. As they store more data digitally, they have discovered that ad hoc processes are not enough. They are starting to look to VARs seeking advice. As a result, a number of resellers are adding storage to their array of products and services. 

VARs can show customers how Storage implementation is the need of the hour. Although SMEs have only a limited budget for capital IT purchases, they are badly in need of better storage solutions, and often they are well aware of it. “Channel partners continue to play a strategic role in the new market. They offer customers the breadth of solutions and attached services offerings which are not only best in class but also the best value,” says Sandeep. 

However, getting customers to invest in storage can be a difficult proposition. When it comes to storage, a lot of the small businesses don’t want to spend money on it. The challenge before the VARs is explaining to them how important a robust solution is. “The key difference in storage adoption among SMEs from large enterprises is that the latter have issues of scalability, headroom and interoperability, whereas SMEs look for easy, reliable and robust solutions to meet their existing needs - partners need to address these needs most efficiently by understanding a customer's point of view closely,” says Subroto of EMC.

They see a big growth opportunity. The technologies have become cheaper. The demand is meeting the supply, and the VARs have the opportunity to be right in the middle, because there is no one else who could educate these customers. 

As with any major technology sale, SMBs need a lot of guidance when it comes to choosing a storage solution. 

Cisco’s network of around 1,200 partners is able to reach a large percentage of SMBs across the country. “While our SMB-class products are designed specifically with SMBs unique needs and challenges in mind, our partners still need to be conscious of the specific needs and situations of SMB customers before they can effectively address their needs,” says Arun Dharmalingam of Cisco.

“The channel is one of the key pillars of NetApp's strategy for India that help support the customer's product, services, and support needs. Channels are closest to customers and help us get a better appreciation of customer challenges and their requirements,” says Surajit of Netapp.

According to Prakash, “The Channel Partner has to realize that it is not technology that the SME is buying but a cost effective solution that he is buying; it is not about how much investments to make but it is about return on investment. Support to business in a timely, predictable and cost effective way - are some of things what the SME sees in a Channel Partner. Some time credit becomes a consideration and ability of the Channel Partner to provide innovative financial instruments like Lease Financing, Pay per use model becomes important for the SME.”

Security matters

Small businesses are generating a large amount of data in day-to-day operations. But what if they lose that data? The importance of data can be gauged from the fact that according to the reports by varies research firms, 70 per cent of small businesses that experience a catastrophic data loss go out of business within one year. Ensuring that the information in a datacenter is secure and being accessed only by those authorized has become a top concern for all datacenters - large and small. The availability and authentication of data to massive corporates and government databases to the millions of people who use mobile web - is a key priority.  

“Storage security issues exist for every type of user and definitely for SMEs as well. In essence, storage security is an issue, is in demand and is seen as an important investment,” says Subroto.

According to Arun Dharmalingam, “Security is an emerging concern for SMBs, especially considering the business intelligence that is proving to be a competitive advantage for businesses of all sizes. As more businesses host their data electronically or online, the need for security is increasing across all technologies. This is especially so for storage solutions.” 

IBM is enhancing its leading compliance disk storage offering with enhanced drives that will enable 33 per cent more disk capacity.  The IBM system allows partitioning to run third-party ISV applications and leverages both disk and tape, allowing clients to reduce their total cost of ownership and power consumption up to 50 per cent. The Company is formally offering clients the world's fastest one terabyte storage tape drive to help them protect and archive more information with less cost and less energy usage. Storing up to one terabyte of uncompressed data per tape cartridge, storage backups can be completed up to 54 per cent faster than the previous IBM generation drive.  “In the emerging area of information security and encryption key management for storage - where information is 'locked' and can only be accessed by users who have 'keys', IBM will release new Tivoli Key Lifecycle Management software, which helps automate the management of keys where disk and tape storage devices cannot be compromised if lost or stolen,” says Sandeep. 

SMB customers have many of the same disaster recovery and business continuity requirements as large enterprise organizations, but often times don't have the necessary skill sets or budget needed to achieve the desired results. Solutions that address this gap by providing enterprise-level data protection along with the support and guidance needed to deploy will be integral in helping SMBs realize the true benefits of a cloud infrastructure. 

With this environment, NetApp recently announced enhanced integration with Microsoft to deliver enterprise-class data protection solutions to cloud service providers by leveraging the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters. “Although enterprise-class data protection has historically been too expensive for most small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) to implement themselves, NetApp and Microsoft now enable service providers to offer enterprise-class data protection to their SMB customers. Additionally, NetApp announced the availability of new professional service offerings and additional resources and guidance for service providers to build a variety of enterprise-class cloud services.” says Surajit.

 Deepak Singh can be reached at edit@varindia.com