The Hindu Business Line : India, US seen driving worldwide storage growth

Mr S. Ramadorai, CEO and MD, TCS, with Mr Kumar Malavalli, Chairman of the Storage Networking Summit and co-founder of Brocade Communications, in Bangalore on Wednesday. - G.R.N. Somashekar

Bangalore , Dec. 8

FACTORS like rapid growth in installed PC base, mobile subscribers, broadband availability and regulatory compliances like RBI mandates have made India one of the fastest growing storage markets globally.

Growing at 17 per cent, the Indian storage market is expected to touch $425.8 million by 2005 compared to $134.6 million in 2000.

Due to these aspects, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has pegged India, the US, Malaysia and Singapore as the emerging markets that are going to drive the storage industry standards and business.

At the inaugural session of the two-day Storage Networking Summit under way here, Ms Sheila Childs, Chairman of the SNIA board, emphasised the important role that the Indian IT industry, including storage service providers and vendors, would play over the coming years. The Indian chapter of the SNIA already has 50 members and conducts SNIA certification programmes more vigorously than other worldwide forums, she added.

"We are looking to build an SNIA Forum in India that would look at various segments like IP storage, storage management, data management, fibre channel and storage security. In the US, we already have such forums actively working on various segments of the storage industry."

Mr S. Ramadorai, CEO and MD, TCS, inaugurated the summit.