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Computer storage may not be the sexiest high-tech sector, but with the proliferation of data flowing from everything from cell phones to Web-enabled TVs, it offers alluring prospects for growth, according to experts at the HBS Cyberposium 2002 conference on February 9.
"The growth of data files is becoming the equivalent of gravity as a force in the corporate world," said moderator Doug Haynes, a principal at McKinsey and Co. In short, all those bits and bytes from desktop and laptop computers, digital cameras, e-mails, huge corporate databases, and streaming media over the Internet have to go somewhere, and they are boosting the demand for storage higher and higher every year.
In 2000, enterprise storage market revenues hit $80 billion, Haynes said. The industry will continue to innovate, with architectures eventually moving from server-centered to network-centered models that will "virtualize" information, allowing users to store and retrieve files from any location.
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| It's less about hardware and more about service as a whole. |
| — Lam Truong, Seagate Technology |
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One of the greatest challenges will be developing software that can manage the shift to a networked storage system, said Ken Steinhardt, director of technology analysis at EMC Corporation..
Should open or proprietary software standards be used to develop these solutions, Haynes wondered.
"If there's an option, use open standard," said Steinhardt. "But the first goal should be to solve the business challenge, regardless of standard." Again and again, he said, customers ask him for technology that creates compatibility so that different systems will "play nice" with each other in the exchange of data.
Michael Marchi, a senior director of enterprise marketing at Network Appliance, noted, "It's a delicate balance as you build bigger solutions—the focus becomes adding incremental layers of software functionality."
"It's less about hardware and more about service as a whole," commented Lam Truong, senior vice president of e-business strategy at Seagate Technology. Marchi agreed. "The companies that are winning in storage have a direct sales force and are very focused on a particular area of the market."