Firms see benefits of outsourcing Sans

IT managers will soon see telecoms operators offering value added remote storage area networks (Sans) to tempt them to outsource storage management, according to market watcher Analysys.

The vast majority of storage is currently hosted and managed in-house, but by 2005 the remote storage market will top $19bn globally, according to Margaret Hopkins of Analysys.

"There's clearly an opportunity for carriers out there because at the moment most large companies manage their storage in-house and are acting as the drivers in demand for remote managed San services," she said.

"Data storage and management are now major issues for businesses of all sizes, and organisations need an array of storage facilities and services, such as disaster recovery, web hosting, content warehousing, centralised back-up and archiving," Hopkins added. "Those service providers that can ultimately deliver the value add will reap the real money."

Recent findings from financial group Merrill Lynch support the outsourcing model, showing that around half of all chief information officers in Europe and the US were put off investing in Sans by the high entry price.

Some projects require a minimum investment of $1m, although most said they considered Sans to be of strategic interest.

Analyst group Gartner estimates that by 2004 average-sized companies will be handling upwards of 150Tb of data. According to recent research from the University of California, more data will be created in the next three years than in the whole of human history.