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Back to the Future

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

Storage adoption in telecom in future would not be merely restricted to SAN

implementation, but also involve other technologies. These would include storage

virtualization, CDR Lifecycle Management (CDR Collection, back-end archiving for

Regulatory Compliance), as well as New Services–Offerings for MMS, unified

messaging, voice mail, VoIP and DSL. Says Chugh, "In a telecom environment,

CDRs have a lifecycle; that is to say that many LoBs are involved in the CDR

collection, correlation, distribution, bill processing, data warehousing and

archiving. However, depending on the access requirements and what business

objective the data is needed for, each functional group (LOB) will look at the

value of the data differently, and hence will place different values on the

right infrastructure needed to support this data."

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The goal behind storage virtualization is to isolate the server OS and its

applications from the technicalities of storage devices, thereby simplifying

media management and the allocation of storage space to each server, or host

computer. Says Avijit Basu, national sales manager-storage, HP India, "With

storage virtualization software in place, servers and their applications use

logical volumes that shield the host from the complexities of physical devices.

Storage virtualization presents the OS with logical volumes."

Avijit

Basu,
 



national sales 


manager-storage,


HP India

The benefits of logical volumes are many. Without storage virtualization, the

host OS becomes strictly dependent on the technical characteristics of the

storage devices, with the result that apparently simple activities, such as

replacing or adding media, require stopping the host and its applications while

setting up new storage devices and copying data. By contrast, Anil Valluri of

Sun Microsystems feels that storage virtualization removes most media management

problems from host computers and gives administrators the tools to create and

connect logical volumes to application hosts, regardless of the technical

specifications or network locations of the physical storage.

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The obvious advantage of storage virtualization for telecom service providers

is simplified and less expensive storage administration. Says Kumar,

"Therefore, it is not surprising that most storage vendors offer

virtualization capabilities, although significant differences exist among

solutions." A very apparent distinction is the location of the storage

virtualization logic, which can reside on host computers, on storage devices, or

on network devices, such as a switch, a router, or a dedicated computer. From a

broader perspective, storage virtualization could be the "killer

application" of networked storage, and become one of the crucial factors

driving a telco’s choice of storage vendor.

Vendor

market share in telecom and BPO
Vendor Approximate

revenue (in Rs/crore)
HP 75
IBM 47
Sun

Microsystems
31
Network

Appliances
28
EMC 14
StorageTek 12
Hitachi

Data Systems
11
Others* 12
*

Others include pure software vendors like CA and Veritas
Telecom storage

revenue taken as Rs 160 crore and BPO as Rs 70 crore
Source: V&D

estimates CyberMedia Research

Telecom storage market would also be driven in the next two years by new

value added services cropping up, which every telco is trying to present as

their USP. The convergence of networks is driving carriers from voice to more IP

data-service offerings. New billing models with content-rich services create new

challenges for how content, access and usage data is collected, rated, stored

and billed. EMC storage solutions provide wireless and wireline operators with

high availability, scalability and automated software to dynamically manage

block and file level data between common storage platforms (SAN, NAS, CAS) to

meets SLA’s and protect brand identities.

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Reference Information Gathers Momentum



Reference information turned out to be another hot area for telecom storage

this year. Reference information is actually the collection of digital assets of

organizations retained for active reference. These could be electronic

documents, e-mail, movies, digital X-rays, digital MRIs, product design

documents, CAD/CAM designs, historical documents, Powerpoint presentations,

check images, photos, maps amongst others. Valluri feels that the storage

requirements for "reference information," such as digital images of

documents and pictures, will far outpace the storage requirements for

traditional data, such as database information, over the next few years

especially in the telecom sector.

The common solutions that were available for reference information storage

during 2003-04 were NearStore from Network Appliances, Centera from EMC,

StorageWorks Scalable Reference SAN with NAS from HP and TotalStorage Virtual

Tape Server from IBM amongst others. The proliferation of reference information

in the telecom sector has made it increasingly clear that traditional primary

and secondary storage solutions simply do not meet all data storage needs for

telcos. Primary storage is often too expensive and needlessly fast, while

secondary storage is too slow. Recognizing this gap, most storage vendors are

now pioneering storage solutions with price/performance characteristics that

bridge the gap between traditional primary and secondary storage.

Storage–What,

Why, and for Who?
  High

Priority
Medium

Priority
Low

Priority
Scalability Telcos BPO
Interoperability Telcos,

BPO
Performance Telcos BPO
Manageability BPO Telcos
Reliability BPO Telcos
Source:

V&D estimates CyberMedia Research
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Disaster Recovery for BPOs



Disaster recovery and business continuity planning have been one of the

biggest catalysts for increasing storage implementation in the telecom sector

and even more in BPO. For most BPO operations, stringent SLAs with their clients

necessitated maintenance of a mirror site from which retrieval could be either

manual or online. Large call centers which added more facilities this year and

also set up DR sites went for large scale storage implementation with size in

the range of even reaching close to a crore. These included names like WNS,

Daksh, eFunds, Tracmail, eServe and Covergys–some of the call centers/BPO

outfits which spent heavily on storage during 2003—04.

With most BPO service providers in the country increasingly concentrating on

intelligent usage of information to derive maximum RoI, they would be compelled

to consider the advantages of implementing intelligent enterprise storage. For

most BPO companies, having a consolidated networked storage would automatically

translate into cost savings and productivity gains which in turn would further

fuel demand. What drove a large part of storage sell was the influx of data

centers and NOCs which in many cases doubled up as DR sites for both telcos and

BPO outfits.

Rajneesh De

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