If PQ Africa`s success in terms of local EMC storage sales is anything to go by, the evidence is clear that SA by no means lags behind in the worldwide storage boom. And, it`s hitting in a hard way.
In the financial results released by Comparex Holdings in February for the six-month period ending on 30 November 2000, Comparex high lighted an increase of 137% in the group`s storage turnover compared to the previous six months. This is attributed to the new strategic relationship with EMC.
PQ Africa, a Comparex Holdings company, is EMC`S largest partner in Africa.
"Persetel, the data centre company responsible for EMC storage at PQ Africa, is a company with tremendous resources, wide local reach and a complete solution set for the enterprise - incorporating software and hardware consultancy as well as product expertise," says Patrick Ricaud, country manager of EMC SA.
"Having them as a strategic reseller means customers have access to value-added EMC solutions."
Leon Avenant, Managing Executive of Persetel, believes one of the biggest challenges has been turning SA companies onto the idea of the value-add component of storage. "EMC, being a storage company, not a disk company, provides this differentiating quality," he says.
"Persetel`s challenge is to convince customers not to buy storage products on price per megabyte only. You don`t buy a car on price per cc, and, similarly, the storage value-add will never be realised in terms of price per megabyte but, rather, in terms of business continuance and the management software."
Avenant says companies buying data centre storage are still very much the traditional enterprise storage users, such as those in the banking and insurance worlds. "The notable trend, here, is that the drivers of the storage boom are data warehousing, customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI) implementations, particularly in the larger telco and cellular providers."
Although dot-coms around the rest of the developed world are a key-contributing factor to the storage demand, having to ensure 24-hour availability around the globe, this reality is still mainly prevalent in the US.
In SA, the debate as to whether dot-com businesses will ever get off the ground lingers on. "For the time being, this is not a huge driver locally. Although pure Internet dot-com companies are not taking off yet with size of the consumer market perhaps not big enough, e-business continues driving the storage uptake, but this is more in a `click-and-mortar` fashion, such as banks offering online services for more efficient customer service," Avenant says.
International predictions by Gartner indicate that the storage will show around 1 800% growth over the next five years, but SA is not very likely to realise this growth due to the slower upstart of dot-com businesses. Nevertheless, storage growth is substantial.
Avenant cites explosive growth in the retail sector, particularly in terms of BI implementations to improve ROI, as further fuelling demand for storage. "A lot of our customers are looking at improving their expense line by deploying data warehouse systems.
"Traditionally, it is technologies such as BI and CRM that take up a lot of storage, and these developments are also very much in line with international trends."
SA is also starting to see midrange type organisations growing in terms of their storage needs. The EMC CLARiiON product addresses the NAS and mid-range market, and PQ Africa is starting to see successes here, too.
Companies that were not big storage users before are now starting to use it. Avenant believes the storage requirement drivers, however, remain the same, whether in big or small companies.
In terms of the local NAS developments, Avenant says companies are still grappling with NT consolidation, a phase likely to effect the NAS market.
"Most larger organisations are starting to look at an enterprise storage strategy, in the sense that they have multiple servers attached to a storage pool. However, when it comes to SANs, which include a NAS component, very few local companies have a clear strategy in place.
"The drawback with regards SAN technology is attaching SANs across the network. There are strategies to deploy a storage pool for multiple users and applications across the wide area, but the cost of bandwidth remains a delimiting factor," he says.
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