Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

2002 STORAGE REVENUES WILL NOT SEE A SIGNIFICANT UPTURN

Overall 2002 storage revenues will not see any significant upturn, according to a report published by Peripheral Concepts Inc. In calendar year 2002, a number of companies will show lower revenues than 2001 just because their first half of 2001 was still very strong. But storage networking is suffering less than the rest of the industry. SAN and NAS systems, software and components are expected to grow about 20%, while the overall storage system revenue will only reach in 2002 its 2000 level of $24 Billion.

The economy slump has not hindered designers ability to innovate. The past eighteen months have seen a surge in the number of well funded start-ups; over one hundred are identified in the report. "New technological advances are about to completely change the landscape of storage networking. No vendor can ignore this movement, as some of the technologies that seemed promising last year may end up being stop-gap short term solutions," says Farid Neema, president of Peripheral Concepts Inc and author of the report.

The most significant advances are happening in three areas that may overlap. First is a family of new hybrid devices that combine the functions of a server, a multi-protocol low latency switch, and a virtualization engine. They are called intelligent/routing switches, appliances, or global controller. They may end up to be the best vehicle to fulfilling the convergence of SAN and NAS. The second area of major changes is in data acceleration techniques, involving parallel processing combined with grand scale silicon implementations. Thirdly, come virtualization and aggregation engines which are overcoming some of the most serious shortcomings of NAS and SAN.

SAN and NAS continue to offer a very strong market opportunity, concludes this report that covers major technologies, applications, revenues and market shares.

The report titled "SAN and NAS -- Infrastructure, Products and Market Opportunities" contains 400 pages. It identifies over 50 companies that are leading the development of SAN and NAS. Characteristics of over 40 products are detailed in feature matrices that allow comparison.

Peripheral Concepts Inc is a leading consulting firm specializing in storage and storage management. If you have any questions please contact them 805-563-9491, email reports@periconcepts.com or view the detailed table of contents on the Web at www.periconcepts.com under Reports.

Contact: Peripheral Concepts Inc, Farid Neema, 805-563-9491 fneema@periconcepts.com.