After a short break, I was privileged last week to support a worldwide delegation of SNIA leaders in Singapore and Bangalore. I had not been to these cities for a long time, too long I guess. This SNIA tour was a great opportunity to meet with CIO’s, Officials, Storage Professionals and representatives of the local press.

In Singapore I was impressed by the overall efforts of IT professionals to use IT technologies and IT skills to not only empower businesses but also to improve Singaporeans’ everyday life and professional developments. In a discussion with
Dr Tan Geok Leng of IDA, we were given an introduction to the ambitious IT plan of Singapore for 2015 (PDF), guaranteeing homes and businesses access to amazing personal services and generating more IT jobs opportunities. For example, IDA’s experts are trying to figure out how they could improve access to Internet information for Singaporeans (and probably for a good portion of south-east Asia) by hosting locally mirrors of internet data repositories…No doubts that the Storage experts of SNIA liked that story! Another example is the financial incentives for IT professionals of
Singapore to follow trainings that are officially recognised by IDA’s education programs. The SNIA South-Asia  team has started discussions with Singapore’s IDA to possibly include the SNIA SNCP in those programs; this would be just another great support for this base-level training for storage engineers that is also included in Hitachi Data Systems’ education services.

CIO’s and IT professionals of Singapore as well the local press confirmed the significant economic growth of the ASEAN area and the significant investment of SMB/SME in storage networking solutions, as previously noticed in a recent report from AMI Partners (PDF). I had a chance to discuss this market trend in a TV interview with Channel News Asia as well as the strong impact of regulations such as SoX or more locally the Limitation Act, Records Retention Act or the Evidence Act on data management practises.

The Singapore journalists we met were pleased to have access to a vendor-neutral forum with the re-positioning of the SNIA South-Asia chapter to discuss storage market topics outside any vendor’s or analyst’s context.
      

The next hop got me in Bangalore: what a change, what a transformation! This south Indian city is truly enjoying a major growth in many areas, with significant investments from major IT firms, and with giant traffic jams! The local daily reported that 5 majors IT companies had already invested over $1B in India with a strong portion for the Bangalore area. The storage Indian market is very much aligned with south-Asian trends, but the last IDC numbers tell us that India is out growing all other ASEAN countries traditionally included in APAC market reports. At the CxO conference organised by SNIA-India, now an independent regional affiliate of SNIA, we heard that many Indian industry segments are investing in storage: Telcos, Government, Healthcare, Oil&Gas, Art & Entertainment (Bollywood & digital movie studios) as well as SMB/SME. Multi-PBs storage projects are not rare anymore in India. 

Technical education seems also to remain a high priority in a region where many businesses around R&D outsourcing are being developed. The SNIA India press conference highlighted a strong interest in the convergence and commonalities between the Enterprise storage market and the emerging Home storage market. A possible intersection of these 2 markets is already defined by Telco or Internet providers proposing services to store and/or protect data. There seemed to be consensus within the CxO conference audience that privacy management and regulations will fuel many debates related to home information storage in the future.

Bangalore has lots of IT talents: probably one of the highest PhD densities per square meter! My meeting with SNIA India members was really re-energizing as they demonstrated such enthusiasm and determination to support the growth of the storage business in India through new SNIA programs in India, including IT professional trainings, support for storage standard developments, technical demonstrations at the IIIT of Bangalore and storage-user programs.       

Before I forget, one more word on one of my favourite topics: Grid! Both Singapore and Bangalore IT professionals have expressed strong interests in Grid Computing and the challenges to manage data & storage in such environments. Singapore is also hosting a separate National Grid project.

A big thank to my colleagues Ricky Fun as well as Atul Sood and his team for helping me to better understand the business trends of their respective areas. It was a great week!

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