'The challenge is to make storage more affordable'

What is driving archiving of data?

Data archiving is being driven by two important factors. One is that
archiving lowers the cost of storage as a whole. As such, customers are
archiving a lot of stable data. Secondly, compliance and regulations are also
driving archiving. Though archiving is not so much compliance driven, customers
are doing it as a best practice. 

What kind of secondary storage solutions are customers
looking for?

Customers are looking for solutions that would help them lower their storage
costs considerably. They want the solutions to be highly scalable with the
ability to host data for a longer period of time. They also want features like
searchability. Besides, they want good integration with applications like backup
and recovery applications. They want their applications to do backup and data
recovery faster. As compliance and data security becomes paramount, customers
are keen that stored data is non-erasable and non-rewritable. Given all this,
data encryption is becoming important.

What are the current trends in secondary storage?

A large number of customers are moving from tape-based backup to disk-based
backup as the later offers tremendous advantages in terms of reliability,
scalability and speed at which backup can be performed. Virtual tape library (VTL)
is also becoming popular. NetApp offers a VTL backup solution, a disk-based
storage system that appears like a tape library to a backup application, while
leveraging the superior reliability and performance features of disk technology.
VTL offers simplified data management and provides seamless integration into
customer's existing backup environment.

What are the features that a good secondary storage
solution must have?

A good disk-based back up solution should be able to back up frequently
without affecting performance. A good storage system should have a very
efficient system of data recovery. Availability of the system is also important.
There should not be any disruption in data availability. Moreover, security of
data is very important.

Is encryption of data on tapes and disk catching up?

Customers are increasingly looking at encrypting their data to prevent their
theft or misuse. As encryption devices become more affordable, there is enormous
amount of interest among customers to encrypt data on tape and disks. In India,
the outsourcing service providers might start using encryption as a best
practice.  Encryption would surely
help Indian companies in meeting regulatory and compliance needs.

Going forward, what do you think are the issues?

The challenge is to make storage more affordable. Fortunately, costs have
come down significantly. Also, from a customer's perspective it is important
that they have an understanding of prioritization of data. The classification of
data according to priority is important. Moreover, it must be easy for them to
map and search data.

What kind of interest in archiving do you see in India?

The level of interest in India is high with the outsourcing and financial
sector companies taking the lead. A lot of this is surely being driven by
regulatory and compliance needs. And that's one of the reasons we are doing
well in India. Network Appliance is doing quite well in India and has been
growing faster that the market.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey

ravisp@cybermedia.co.in