In the business space, virtualisation and consolidation is expected to be of significant importance, with organisations looking to maximise their existing investments and continue their focus on compliance and security-related concerns.
The growing presence of tier 1 integrators and vendors looking to take a share in the SME market is also a factor mid-market resellers will have to deal with in 2006, Dimension Data’s data centre solutions national business manager, Ronnie Altit, says.
This could be seen in consolidated throughout 2005 with companies like EMC significantly broadening its offerings via the acquisition of VMWare, Legato, SMARTS and Dantz, and Sun’s acquisition of StorageTek. "Price points of centralised storage are no longer out of the realm of the SMB space and Dimension Data, as well as the vendors, are positioning themselves to be able to take whole of infrastructure solutions to companies in this space," he says.
With management of data costing three to four times that of storing the data, according to Altit, data management software will also be a big hit in the year to come.
Unsurprisingly that is also the view of IBM Software Group, certified consulting IT specialist, Tivoli, Trevor Foley, who argues storage virtualisation technologies are rapidly becoming part of mainstream storage infrastructure.
"During 2005, IBM increased its customer base for the SAN Volume Controller (disk virtualisation) by 140 percent based on cost reduction, improved utilisation, better performance and simpler management benefits," he says.
With workplaces becoming increasingly mobile, continuous data protection technologies are also growing in popularity, Foley says.
"Traditional backup/restore applications aren’t always suitable for files stored on personal workstations or mobile devices," he says. "Continuous data protection technologies provide close to real-time protection of files on these types of devices."
The year 2006 is also expected to see some clarity around what are exactly the legal requirements of local organisations when it comes to data retention, Foley says.
For NetApp director of alliances and marketing, Mark Heers, the emerging trends of data security — the encryption of critical data — and end users looking to buy storage from dedicated vendors, are expected to make an impact in the year ahead. "This does not mean there won’t be a continuing effort around firewalls and identity management, but an added focus on encrypting critical data will emerge," he says.
"Server and storage decisions are also being separated as more organisations see storage as a critical component of their infrastructure and are no longer simply buying storage from the server vendor."
On the consumer side of storage, 2005’s massive demand for flash-based memory products is expected to continue well into 2006, Legend worldwide sales director, Rob Kester, says.
"As consumers begin to explore the full functionality of their personal devices they are looking for greater storage capacities to support them," he says.
With high definition television growing in popularity, and using up twice the capacity of standard definition, products like personal video recorders are also shaping up as opportunities for resellers in 2006, Kester says.
Similarly, the growth in IP security and surveillance in 2005 will see sales in hard drive-based servers to manage the large amounts of data recorded by the digital camera sales boom in 2006. "Biometrics and security for personal storage devices will be particularly big in 2006," he says. "For example, a thumb drive requiring fingerprint identification or a storage device that requires thumb print recognition and other technologies to secure personal storage devices will be increasingly available in 2006."
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