Adaptec bracing itself for iSCI revolution

Adaptec is expecting an explosion in the demand for iSCI-SAN technology in the small to medium sized business market because they believe organisations are ready to try new storage technologies and methods.

They have paved the way for this expected boom by making sure they can provide all of the necessary components needed to attach an iSCI connection to a SAN.

In the past, companies had to purchase iSCI components, such as initiators, switches and target devices from different companies. Adaptec, however, is now able to provide all of these components needed for a standard connection to a SAN, after making recent acquisitions.

Peter Murphy, the Sales and Marketing Manager of Europe and Asia visited Australia explained why organisations are ready to embrace this technology now, but were not before: "Enterprises will still rely on a fibre channel connection to a SAN, but small to medium sized businesses will now able to achieve the same results for a much cheaper prices through an iSCI connection. Companies which have 30 plus people, and share data across the network could not have SANs until the invention of iSCI because fibre channels were too expensive. So embracing iSCI will give these companies an opportunity to really take advantage of SANs now.

"I think people were entrenched in old technology until now. It was a cultural thing. After Y2K and the internet boom, people were keen just to stick to existing technology and considered new things to be unproven. They wanted to feel safe with what they had got and did not have the appetite for change. But now, this year, businesses seem ready to embrace new technologies, so this is the right time for iSCI to take off. I think we are going to see real acceleration in interest this year.

Suddenly businesses can buy the equivalent of a BMW at the price of Holden. Plus they can get hold of all the parts to fit the car, instead of going to different sources for additions or replacements."

Adaptec are also planning to roll out iSCSI-SATA products later this year, again, at a low cost for small to medium sized businesses. The main purpose will be for referencing purposes. Demetri Chistodoulou, Country Manager for Australia & New Zealand elaborated: "The iSCSI-SATA systems will be used for things you don't need access to but you still need to store somewhere, such as X-rays and copies of cheques, for example. Serial ATA has very high capacity and does not cost much to maintain. 80 percent of data in businesses is reference data and not like a bank transaction, where you need the immediate balance of the account. A lot of that information could be stored in a low cost Serial ATA and the data could be retrieved quickly when necessary through the iSCSI."

Adaptec are also in the process of creating hardware and software solutions to address different applications. For instance, the company is looking up improving data back-up facilities for local drives on laptops and PCs.

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