The Hindu Business Line : HP eyes storage market in India

Recently in Bristol Enthused by the strong storage market growth in India, global IT giant Hewlett-Packard is betting big on the storage opportunities in small and medium business (SMB) segment in the country.

“The storage market opportunity, particularly in the SMB space, is strong. HP StorageWorks is addressing the SMB market by investing in go-to-market, leveraging the strength of channel partners in mid-market, and expanding the number of sales professionals to support channel partners reaching the SMBs,” said Mr Jim Wagstaff, Vice-President and General Manager, StorageWorks Division, Enterprise Storage and Servers, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP. India and China are amongst the fastest growing markets in Asia Pacific as far as the overall storage market is concerned, Mr Wagstaff said, adding that IT spends on storage were growing at 15 per cent in India, and 14 per cent in China.

IDC predictions

According to IDC Worldwide SMB 2007 predictions, there are 67 million SMBs worldwide.

The Asia-Pacific houses the largest cluster of SMBs (41 per cent) followed by EMEA (34 per cent) and Americas (25 per cent).

Further, the SMB IT storage spend in 2007 is estimated at $26.1 billion, with hardware accounting for 57 per cent (of the spend), software 13 per cent, and services about 30 per cent.

Market opportunity

The size of the market opportunity can well be gauged from the fact that the total spend is projected to touch $38.6 billion by 2010, while the storage hardware is estimated to grow by 39 per cent.

“SMB is not a new focus area for us and we have had the SMB market team at a worldwide level for sometime. We are driving activities in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region and supplementing them through marketing communications and advertisement strategy,” he said.

The company recently showcased its latest StorageWorks solutions enabling SMBs to gain control over their rapidly expanding storage environments. Its solutions which include DAT160 tape drives, LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 tape drives, HP Ultrium 448c tape blades and D2D back-up systems are aimed at providing SMBs with cost effective solutions that reduce the complexity, while maximising resource utilisation and ensuring that the data is secure and protected.

With these solutions, HP aims to offer SMBs enterprise-class, peak performance standards without sacrificing quality.

The HP StorageWorks solutions undergo extensive testing and quality assurance processes at the advanced facilities and capabilities in the HP StorageWorks Research facility in Bristol.

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