The storage management software market in Singapore surged 49 percent – from US$10 million to US$15 million in 2001 – said IDC Asia-Pacific. It further stated that the market will continue to grow to almost US$18 million by the end of 2002 at a growth rate of 14 percent year-on-year.
Said its senior analyst, software, Daphne Chung: “The storage management software market in Singapore was driven by the information explosion in organizations and the increasing need to maximize the knowledge and use of applications and tools across the enterprise.”
“These organizations also tend to have business concerns that span into the region and world with a highly mobile workforce that have to be empowered with the right information in real time. To deliver on such business needs, storage management must become core to its IT systems as well.”
Other factors such as the dropping prices of storage devices will help stimulate purchase although cycle times are expected to increase as buyers demonstrate more caution in spending and assessment of systems.
In addition, large enterprises looking to improve efficiencies of their expensive and limited human resources will continue to invest in enterprise applications, which encourages demand for storage devices and storage management software.
The heterogeneous nature of most IT systems in Singapore is also likely to drive customers to seek methods into integrating and bridging information sources for use in an extended organization, which in turn, drives storage management uptake.
The storage management software market has attracted a significant amount of interest with recent worldwide events and local governments encouraging businesses to invest in disaster recovery solutions.
However, despites a uniform sustained interest in storage management software solutions, growth rates have been lower in countries such as Australia and Singapore where purchasing of storage capacity and management software have already been integrated into normal business IT practices and budgets over the years.
This does not mean that the Sngapore’s storage management software market is already saturated, said Chung. She added: “Customer demand will continue in the coming years but it is likely to start tapering off as the market moves into a matured phase. But many small-and-medium-enterprises (SMEs) that have not deployed enterprise information systems might prove to be significant growth areas for vendors; however, sales strategies will have to accommodate for the peculiarities associated with the SME market.”
In countries where IT adoption is still in its nascent state, a significant amount of education on what are the benefits of Infrastructure Management software is still required, particularly as customers make their key infrastructure hardware purchases.
For example, storage management is a relatively new field in China, so the lack of experienced human resources on both the vendor side and customer side is a considerable problem.
Vendors will need experienced employees that can provide customer recommendations and consultation while customers need skilled IT staff to implement and maintain such systems.
