Bullish outlook for Malaysia's storage market: HDS

• HDS Malaysia upbeat about its local growth prospect; taps 3 new sectors for growth
• Also, CTO reveals its top 10 predictions for the storage landscape 

HITACHI Data Systems (HDS) believes it can outpace market growth and increase its share of the local storage market, said its newly appointed country head for Malaysia.
 
Citing an IDC report, Wee Kai Teck (pic), managing director of HDS Malaysia, noted that IT spending in Malaysia is predicted to grow to US$10.4 billion in 2013, a 7.7% increase from the year before, in various segments including hardware, software and services.
 
“According to IDC, Malaysia continues to outpace GDP growth from a storage point of view as the banking and telco sector continues to drive key spending in this country,” Wee said at a Jan 22 media briefing to discuss HDS Malaysia’s view of the top 10 technology trends for 2013. “HDS Malaysia hopes to grow the business in Malaysia, faster than the market.”
 
Wee, a 20-year industry vet who was most recently at rival player EMC, was appointed the storage giant’s new managing director after the position fell vacant when another industry icon, Johnson Khoo, left to pursue his own interests.
 
Wee said the company has traditionally been strong in its sales to the public, government-linked company (GLC) and telco sectors, claiming that HDS Malaysia has “quite a fair bit of market share" [in those sectors]. He added that it would continue to focus on these three sectors for 2013.
 
On which other segments HDS Malaysia would be tapping this year, Wee identified three: Oil and gas, financial services and healthcare.
 
“We are 100% channel-centric and unlike other companies which say they are but in reality may not be, we believe that this is only way to reach the market,” he told Digital News Asia (DNA) on the sidelines of the briefing.
 
Pressed further as to how HDS Malaysia is going to achieve its taregted growth, especially in those three new sectors, Wee said that the company's challenge would be to find not only the right channel partner to work with but also to ensure that they are in the right segments of the market.
 
“Part of my task will be to ensure that the right partners address the right segment of the market,” he explained. “In some cases, we have the right partners but they may not be in the right segments of the market. We will need to address this.”
 
Quizzed as to how HDS will tackle the competition from rivals EMC, IBM and HP, especially the last, which has announced its intention to target the mid-tier market through the acquisition of 3Par, Wee said his was “very confident” about coming out ahead.
 
“I’m very confident about our chances in the mid-tier sector,” Wee said. “In terms of technology, we’re there or better than the competition. In terms of cost, we’re also very competitive.”
 
Defining storage trends for 2013
 
The briefing also included a video presentation by HDS vice president and chief technology officer Hu Yoshida (pic) outlining his top predictions on expected storage trends shaping the IT industry in 2013.
 
“While some might point to big data as a trend, I view it more as an environment that will drive more specific trends,” Yoshida wrote in a blog post wrapping up his top picks.
 
HDS’ Top 10 Predictions (Click on the links for more detail about individual trends):

1) Dramatic changes in OPEX and CAPEX  -- Increasing adoption of server and storage virtualization is having a major impact on operational costs and is reversing the operations expenditure (OPEX) trend. The cost of storage hardware in capital expenditure (CAPEX) is trending upwards, becoming a greater share of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

2) New consumption models -- The acquisition of storage will begin to change from a CAPEX model, where enterprises buy capacity upfront for the next 4 to 5 years and depreciate it over that period, to an OPEX, pay as you go, on-demand, acquisition model.

3) Managing the explosion of data replication -- More attention will be focused on the uncontrolled growth of replicas, and the need for life cycle management tools like active archives to reduce or eliminate the impact of replicas on TCO.

4) The emergence of enterprise flash controllers -- New flash controllers with advanced processor capabilities will improve the durability, performance, capacity and cost of nulti-level cell (MLC) flash so that it will be competitive with high-performance hard disk drives and replace current enterprise solid-state drives.

5) New requirements for entry enterprise storage systems -- A new class of entry-enterprise storage systems with global cache supporting multiple processor cores will bring relief to midrange, scale up, virtual server environments where traditional dual controllers have run out of gas

6) The need for object-based file systems -- Standard file systems with rigid Inode structures will give way to object-based file systems in order to meet the high capacity requirements of unstructured data.

7) Accelerating use of content platforms for data archives and data sharing -- The use of content platforms for data archives and data sharing will accelerate as users try to reduce the cost of replication and the sharing of information from different applications.

8) Hardware assist controllers to satisfy increasingly complex workloads -- Storage controllers will be enhanced with advanced processors and hardware assist application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to address increasingly complex workloads and higher throughputs.

9) Creating a secure platform for the adoption of mobile devices  -- The adoption of mobile devices will increase productivity and innovation but will require a secure, content anywhere platform for data sharing.

10) More tightly integrated converged solutions -- Certified, pre-configured and pre-tested converged solutions will gain traction, but will require a unified management and orchestration interface.

Related stories:

Wee Kai Teck named managing director of HDS Malaysia

HDS rolls out flash storage for enterprises

HDS unveils converged infrastructure solutions

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