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Newer applications and advances in technology are fueling an extraordinary growth in high-performance external storage, according to the 2001 edition of the SAN Report released by Peripheral Concepts Inc.
With revenues exceeding $30 billion, storage will surpass direct server revenue in 2001. Both SAN and dedicated NAS revenues have more than doubled in 2000. They should triple again by 2003, as indicated below. Six leading vendors cover more than 85% of the market revenue.
OPEN SYSTEM SAN AND NAS
Disk Shipment Revenues ($ Billion)
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
NAS Dedicated 0.4 0.75 1.7 3.0 4.5 5.7
SAN 0.8 2.0 4.0 7.5 11.5 14.5
Fibre Channel (FC) switches have played a vital role in the development of SANs. The switch market has grown five-fold in 2000, and is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2003, in spite of prices dropping 30% per year. Both HBA and router revenue have grown three-fold in 2000, while the hub market has slowed down, showing practically no growth from its 1999 revenue.
Significant progress was accomplished in the implementation of reliable management of SANs. Virtualization has received considerable attention. It plays a key role in solving the centralization problem. The total storage management revenue is expected to reach $6 billion by 2003. Storage resource management is the fastest-growing segment.
This report analyzes five independent user surveys involving more than 1,000 medium and large IT installations, many of which had consolidated storage. With strong support from several powerful industry leaders, IP storage development stands today where FC was four years ago, but its development is likely to be faster than FC. Pros and cons are analyzed and revenues projected through 2004.
The report contains more than 400 pages. It identifies 50+ companies that are leading the development of SAN, and are candidates for partnership. Characteristics of nearly 50 products are detailed in Feature matrices that allow product comparison.
