AMI Sizes Medium Market

NEW YORK -- Storage is the fastest growing area of investment among MBs (medium businesses, or companies between 100 and 999 employees) due to growing demand for data capacity and backup requirements. This is especially so in two of the most industrialized economies Japan and Germany – where MBs are set to invest US$2 billion on storage products and services this year, up some 14% (Japan) and 12% (Germany), according to the latest report by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

"To meet the growing demands of data capacity and network users, secure storage solutions like DAS (direct-attached storage) and SAN/NAS (server/network-attached storage) usage are on the rise," says AMI's Nichelle McKenzie, New York-based Research Analyst. "As storage hardware and management demands and expenses escalate, medium businesses will seek new secure ways to distribute storage to multiple servers and consumers by allocating storage on a network."

German MBs spent US$790 million on storage while Japan MBs spent US$980 million last year. Among German MBs, DAS (over a third of server LAN MBs) and NAS (nearly a quarter of server LAN MBs) are the most widely used technologies. In Japan, MBs regularly back up their LAN servers. The most common methods for data backups are tape (for servers) and external disks/hard drives (for individual PCs). Currently, Japanese MBs are using DAS and SAN at a higher rate than German MBs.

"Hoping to combat the growing volume of data primarily generated from CRM and ERP applications, MBs are adopting more advanced types of network storage media such as SAN and NAS," says Ms. McKenzie. "We will see an increase in the number of MBs in Germany and Japan using advanced storage solutions such as SAN in 2008. Over a quarter of Japan MBs plan to adopt either IP channel or Fiber channel SAN for a storage solution compared to one sixth of German MBs. MBs in these regions that have been in business for a longer period of time tend to invest more in secure storage on an annual basis."

Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc.