Many SAN Shops Do It Themselves

Though analysts predict storage services will be a fast-growing sector in the coming years, a good portion of enterprise users apparently have no interest whatsoever in enlisting any outside help, according to Byte and Switch's August poll.

Of a total of 46 respondents, 43 percent said they have no need for any external professional storage services. Meanwhile, 21 percent said they would have an interest in using an outside services firm to help design and/or deploy SANs or NAS. Another 19 percent picked "offsite backup and recovery services"; 10 percent chose "on-site break/fix services"; and just 7 percent selected "ongoing management of storage systems and software."

The industry, for its part, is expecting services to hit a steady growth spurt. Research firm IDC predicts that the worldwide storage services market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.4 percent from 2002 to 2007 (see IDC: Storage Services on Upswing).

Companies playing in this space range from big-name systems integrators like Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) and IBM Global Services to small specialty providers like GlassHouse Technologies Inc.

In addition, historically product-oriented vendors like EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK), and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) are expecting to earn more of their revenues through professional services down the road.The primary drivers behind outsourced storage services include the need to redeploy internal IT staffers and the complexity of storage networking technologies, according to the Byte and Switch poll.

About a fourth of respondents (26 percent) said the primary reason to outsource storage services is to devote IT staff to other projects. Meanwhile, 17 percent said "complexity of designing/managing the infrastructure" would be the main driver, with just 12 percent claiming outsourced services are a more cost-effective option than training internal staff and 10 percent agreeing that an outside firm could perform the job more quickly. The remaining 36 percent said there was no compelling reason to outsource storage services.

The top issue for survey respondents was entrusting their data storage assets to a third party, with 43 percent citing this as their top concern.

Twenty-six percent said cost was the primary concern, with 10 percent citing "ensuring the project meets our expectations" and 5 percent citing "ensuring the project is completed on time." Meanwhile, just 17 percent said they have "no serious concerns at all." The lucky dogs!

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch