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Jason Stamper's Blog
HDS tapping UK storage demand
August 08, 2008
I caught up with the head of Hitachi Data Systems in the UK this week: Steve Murphy. A Scot with almost 25 years experience in the industry including stints at Oracle, Sun, Fujitsu and EMC, he knows a thing or two about big systems. He also accused me of having more than a passing resemblance to Alan Shearer -- I think I'll assume that's meant as a compliment!
Anyway Murphy came in to lead the UK operation at Hitachi Data Systems around 18 months ago. He reckons the business was in decent shape then, but is doing even better now it's a little more focused on the task in hand. But does he see any evidence of a slowdown in spending in the UK market yet? ...[click continue reading below for more on this entry]...
Me?
Alan Shearer?
"We're not seeing a slowdown, but we are seeing companies exercising caution," Murphy said . "That can actually work in our favour, because many are cautious about continuing to spend on storage in the way that they have in the past. We can offer them solutions that mean they don't need to spend any extra money on storage for three years: that's a powerful message in this climate."
He's talking of course about virtualisation technology, with its ability to get higher utilisation rates from existing storage kit. While VMware is the undisputed leader today in server virtualisation, Murphy claims that HDS is the leader in storage virtualisation (a claim IBM would surely reject).
Anyway, with virtualisation, as well as modular storage systems, and software like dynamic provisioning and storage resource management, Murphy says the firm is ideally placed to take market share in the £3.5bn UK storage market. Murphy points to analyst figures that suggested HDS grew market share worldwide from 34 to 38%, while its nearest rivals, EMC and IBM, actually dropped 4% and 2% respectively. "We're accelerating even faster than that in the UK," Murphy told me.
As well as focusing on the products that most meet the needs of its customers, Murphy has doubled HDS' channel business in the UK, although he also ditched a number of channel partners that weren't a good fit or were not doing the business for HDS.
Another driver for HDS' business in the UK is compliance, according to Murphy. "With Euro-SOX in October this year, MiFID in March next year and the FSA taking more and more control around the regulation of data, compliance is something companies can't ignore," he said. "Finance need more and more control over their data, and we can give them a single pane of glass that gives them the whole view of all of their data, regardless of which system it's physically located on."
Comments
Thanks for the post Jason, maybe you should as Big Al if you can be his double.
Yes money on storage will always continue to be spent,especially with the driver of compliance e.g. archiving. Its believed there will be a huge shift toward companies outsourcing storage space and getting it managed by an outside source- I use the term "outsource" lightly as many believe it will follow the SAAS module, but the difference been with SAAS: administrators still retain full control, with the same in-house configurability & can make changes in real-time (no loss of control as with outsourcing). I'm basing most of this on the recent emergence of such offering's like Google Apps Premier Edition which that gives each company employee (acc. holder) 25gigs of storage space, hosted on Googles Data Centers - This over time as those in the know are predicting will leave CIO's considering the option of removing or part-of there internal structures entirely taking them to the new tagged era of "cloud computing"
This however is looked upon negatively as this may result in large IT job cuts, especially in administration, management & helpdesk. Although human resources could be better be focused on future projects and work better relating to the organizations main business direction. who knows exactly, but we will wait & see.
Byron Graham
Bgraham@groveis.com
Google/Postini & SAAS wholesaler
Thanks for the post Jason, maybe you should stand in as Big Al if you can be his double.
Yes money on storage will always continue to be spent,especially with the driver of compliance e.g. archiving. Its believed there will be a huge shift toward companies outsourcing storage space and getting it managed by an outside source- I use the term "outsource" lightly as many believe it will follow the SAAS module, but the difference been with SAAS: administrators still retain full control, with the same in-house configurability & can make changes in real-time (no loss of control as with outsourcing). I'm basing most of this on the recent emergence of such offering's like Google Apps Premier Edition which that gives each company employee (acc. holder) 25gigs of storage space, hosted on Googles Data Centers - This over time as those in the know are predicting will leave CIO's considering the option of removing or part-of there internal structures entirely taking them to the new tagged era of "cloud computing"
This however is looked upon negatively as this may result in large IT job cuts, especially in administration, management & helpdesk. Although human resources could be better be focused on future projects and work better relating to the organizations main business direction. who knows exactly, but we will wait & see.
Byron Graham
Bgraham@groveis.com
Google/Postini & SAAS wholesaler
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