The One to Watch

As businesses make greater use of Storage Area Networks (SAN), data communication becomes more important. An Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) enables secure communication between SAN and businesses, delivering a high-quality service. Because of this, market researchers with International Data Corp. predict that the iSCSI market will grow from $300 million in 2005 to more than $3 billion by 2008.

This growth is no surprise since the storage consolidation available through iSCSI allows organizations to increase reliability, availability and storage flexibility while improving security and manageability. Priced competitively, iSCSI offers additional benefits such as:

• Access from any server over an existing IP infrastructure, therefore eliminating distance limitations.
• Consolidated storage through lower disk capacity utilization and fewer storage management routes.
• Storage backup over an IP network that enables systems to maintain data backups online, making it readily available to restore if needed.
• SAN with fast data migration and backup built in, which prevents data loss.
• The ability to store databases, e-mails, Web applications and Microsoft documents.
• Stable and familiar standards with which many IT staffs are already familiar.
• Fewer disparate networks and cabling, which simplifies the overall system.
• Ethernet switches versus special fiber channel switches.

The convenience of the iSCSI infrastructure makes the system doubly appealing to smaller businesses. Several storage industry analysts predict more small businesses will adopt the iSCSI protocol within the next several years because of its benefits and ease of use.

Anticipating an increase in capacity needs also points to greater popularity for iSCSI. According to federal regulations, file storage requirements will double for most organizations every two years due to growing e-mail and other databases needs.

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