Storage Area Networks and Wireless Applications

STORAGE AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS

By Kishore Jethanandani

In collaboration with Datacomm Research Company

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 INTERDEPENDENCE OF WIRELESS AND STORAGE..................................... 6

1.1 Value of Storage--Aggregation....................................................................................... 7

1.2 Value of Storage—Assimilation...................................................................................... 8

1.3 Value of Storage—Dissemination .................................................................................. 9

1.4 Storage and Wireless Applications .............................................................................. 10

1.5 Managing Storage Area Networks ............................................................................... 11

2 TECHNOLOGY ....................................................................................................... 12

2.1 Beyond SCSI................................................................................................................ 13

2.2 Networks and Scalability .............................................................................................. 14

3 STORAGE AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS.................................................... 19

3.1 Storage and Digital Photography ................................................................................. 19

3.2 Unified Messaging, Voice Information and Vehicle Telematics ................................... 21

3.2.1 Storage and Unified Messaging .......................................................................... 23

3.2.2 Storage and Voice Information services.............................................................. 25

3.2.3 Storage and Telematics....................................................................................... 26

3.3 Location based services............................................................................................... 26

3.4 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT .......................................................... 28

3.5 STORAGE AND MEDICAL APPLICATIONS............................................................... 30

3.6 Rich Media Applications............................................................................................... 34

4 PROSPECTS OF LEADING APPLICATIONS OF STORAGE .......................... 36

4.1 Prospects of Digital Photography................................................................................. 38

4.2 Unified Messaging, Voice Information and Telematics ................................................ 40

4.3 Business Intelligence ................................................................................................... 45

4.4 Prospects of Location Based Services ........................................................................ 46

4.5 Medical Applications .................................................................................................... 48

5 COMPETITIVE ISSUES ........................................................................................ 50

5.1 Digital Photography...................................................................................................... 50

5.1.1 Applied Science Fiction’s (ASF™) ....................................................................... 51

5.1.2 Pixel Magic Imaging (www.pmimaging.com)....................................................... 53

5.2 Unified Messaging, Voice Information and Telematics ................................................ 54

5.2.1 Tornado Development (www.tornadodevelopment.com/)................................... 54

5.2.2 BeVOCAL (http://www.bevocal.com/index.html) ................................................. 57

5.3 CRM/Business Intelligence .......................................................................................... 58

5.3.1 Teradata (www.teradata.com)............................................................................. 61

5.4 Location Based Services.............................................................................................. 63

5.4.1 Space Machine (http://www.spacemachine.net/) ................................................ 64

5.5 Medical Applications .................................................................................................... 67

5.5.1 General Electric Medical Information Systems

http://www.gemedicalsystems.com/it_solutions/index.html)................................................. 68

6 EXPERIENCES OF KEY PLAYERS: ................................................................... 72

6.1 Storability (www.storability) .......................................................................................... 72

6.2 IBM/Tivoli...................................................................................................................... 73

6.3 Veritas (http://www.veritas.com/) ................................................................................ 77

6.4 E-motion (www.emotion.com) ...................................................................................... 78

6.5 Viafone (www.viafone.com) ......................................................................................... 79

6.6 Tellme (www.tellme.com)............................................................................................. 81

6.7 Openwave (http://www.openwave.com) ...................................................................... 82

6.8 Datadirectnet ( http://www.datadirectnet.com/)........................................................... 83

6.9 Generic Media (www.genericmedia.com) .................................................................... 84

6.10 Digital Fountain (http://www.digitalfountain.com)......................................................... 85

6.11 Airborne Entertainment (http://www.airborne-e.com)................................................... 86

6.12 I-DRIVE (http://www.idrive.com/) ................................................................................. 87

6.13 Deep Bridge (http://www.deepbridge.com/) ................................................................. 88

6.14 Broadstream (http://www.broadstream.com/) .............................................................. 89

6.15 Vicinity (www.vicinity.com) ........................................................................................... 90

6.16 Mediabin (www.MediaBin.com).................................................................................... 92

6.17 Scale Eight (www.scale8.com)..................................................................................... 94

7 CONCLUSIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS STRATEGY .................... 95

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Storage technologies will drive the adoption of wireless applications in the near term future.

The value proposition of storage technologies is the aggregation, assimilation and

dissemination of large volumes of information. Wireless technologies help to feed data to

large repositories and are essential for real time communication of messages for speedy

execution of tasks.

The impact of storage technologies on wireless applications will be more significant in the

future as the transition from LAN attached storage devices to storage area networks (SAN)

is completed. SANs, aided by related technologies, are an efficient means for data delivery

and its conversion, from a single source, for reuse by a large variety of wireless devices.

Innovations in system integration as well as storage management software, virtualization

and content management tools, will play a key role in speedy and cost-effective delivery of

data to wireless devices. File systems will enable rapid retrieval of data from tapes for cost-

effective use of imagery, inter-operability in a heterogeneous environment and intelligent

caching to overcome speed limitations of disks.

The six most important storage enabled wireless applications are customer relationship

management/business intelligence, digital photography, enterprise location based services,

unified messaging, voice information and vehicle telematics as a single group, medical

applications and rich media.

Storage requirements for digital photography will increase rapidly as the marriage of film

and digital photography, ubiquitous kiosks and digital photography networks increases the

rate of adoption of digital photography. Digital photography networks will facilitate mobile

albums that can be readily shared.

Storage helps to reap economies of scope from the convergence of multi-media

messaging, mobile voice applications and vehicle telematics. The current high costs of

unified messaging will be lowered by storing all messages in a single undivided data

repository. The increasing popularity of infotainment by vehicle owners, beginning with

satellite entertainment, will increase the demand for storage.

The size and nature of CRM databases has been transformed for real time decision

support. Increasingly, terabyte size repositories process a variety of data at shorter

intervals. Data processing is required for not only strategic purposes but also for tactical

reasons. Data repositories need wireless technologies to not only to receive data quickly

but also to alert decision makers in real time.

Enterprise location based services, not consumer services, will play a key role in increasing

the demand for storage services by the wireless industry. The increasing accumulation of

attribute data correlated with spatial data, imaging, raster data and satellite imagery and

aerial photography will increase the demand for storage. Furthermore, storage helps to

streamline data flows for use in low bandwidth wireless devices.

Medical applications are poised to move beyond imaging data to integrating clinical

information systems and monitoring data for business process efficiency. The deployment

of wireless applications will increase rapidly as they are used for decision support. Storage

demand will increase rapidly as the variety of data stored increases.

Rich media applications of storage will grow mostly outside the broadcasting industry for

Internet broadcasting and enterprise applications. This market has a better longer-term

prospect than in the near term as system integration issues are mired in politics.

1 INTERDEPENDENCE OF WIRELESS AND STORAGE

Introduction: Internet storage technologies, shorn of their technological mystique, are a new age

version of a library. They share the attribute of a repository, which aggregates and preserves

records of information. The analogy does not go one whit further. Storage systems aggregate

information on a scale unimaginable with libraries and they preserve records over a much longer

period of time. Movies or even images can be stored for an indefinite period of time, which is

inconceivable with traditional libraries1.

1 A case study of a digital archive can be found at http://www.dvwebvideo.com/2000/0500/gordon0500.html

Unlike traditional libraries, the size of storage area networks is not limited by space. It expands

with not only the memory capacity of disks but also with the speed of networks that interconnect

arrays of disks as well as software that organizes the data logically for its management from a

single point.

Information on a storage area can also be preserved for a longer period of time since it is

replicated on several disks within or outside a region. If the World Trade Center were a traditional

library of America’s heritage documents, it would have been completely destroyed. On a storage

area network, the same documentation would have been available within the hour at another

destination.

1.1 Value of Storage--Aggregation

Data storehouses are fragmented by the publishing medium, its location or by the type of

equipment or the software used to manage content. Storage technologies aggregate information

from diverse sources.

Data is available on printed records, on films, images or databases. In the world of a traditional

library, stored documents are typically printed documents or at best databases. Films and images

are rarely available and harder to juxtapose with other sources of information. Storage area

networks digitize all information and permit their rendering on a single document.

Information is also fragmented when it’s generated or collected in separate regions. City or state

governments typically gather geographical information and don’t necessarily want to share it at a

centralized point. Storage area networks either provide pointers (by providing metadata or data

about data) about sources of information or segment a unified network such that secure zones

are accessible to those who have acquired the rights to do so.

Free flow of information across regions pre-supposes high speed networks before traffic can flow

efficiently across regions. Emerging storage companies are lighting up ample dark fiber networks,

GiantLoop Networks (www.giantloop.com) has launched its products, to move large volume

data such as that generated in the health industry. Alternatively, storage area networks can mirror

information on disks across geographical boundaries so that information can be accessed locally

without the delays of data flow from the core.

Silos are also created by the technological limitations of equipment. Servers combine both the

storage and the processing function. Consequently, information stored on them does not have to

flow out. Typically, servers are connected to LANs, which have low bandwidth and cannot

manage the flow of large volumes of data. Documents on a storage device can only flow out as

only servers can use it and their networks are designed for large volume data flows.

1.2 Value of Storage—Assimilation

Growing volumes of data don’t go awry because storage volume management, virtualization and

content management software organizes them. Volume management software is equivalent to

the floor plan and the scheme for placement of shelves in a traditional library. It automatically

allocates data to disks without manual intervention. Storage virtualization software is like the

indexing system that directs users to the location of content in storage area networks. Content

Management software is the Dewey Decimal system, which identifies the content available in a

library.

Storage virtualization software, developed by companies such as Veritas (www.veritas.com)

encapsulates terabytes or petabytes of data into a directory structure analogous to the explorer

on the desktop. It lays out the logical structure of data for the corresponding physical location

much like URLs correspond to IP addresses on the Internet. Typically, the user interface of

virtualization software is a portal type of software with a web browser. Unlike an index in a

traditional library, portal software not only simplifies searches of information but also the

movement of data from the point of storage to its consumption destination. Data can simply be

moved by drag and drop methods (security considerations permitting).

Large repositories would risk loss of the value of their information without speedy retrieval of

information of diverse types. Content management defines each data type and its characteristics.

Metadata or the data about data identifies the traits of the data stored such as dates, location

theme so that it can be retrieved by using the attributes as the keyword.

Content Management software automates the processes of archiving, indexing, searching and

assimilation of information. Archiving is done on pre-formatted templates which have meta-data

attached to them. Indexing is automated by combing documents for the recurring words in the

document to identify the themes in the document. Search processes are eased by the

classification of data that is enabled by metadata. Finally, metadata can also define access right

and intellectual property rights associated with content.

The value of content depends on the speed of retrieval as well as the ability to pick specific

pieces of information. General Motors, for example, increased the revenue from its content from $

4 million to $25 million by using Artesia’s content management tools. When indexing is done at a

more granular level, such as by video logging technologies available from Virage, reuse of

content is possible, which enhances its utility as an archive.

Content Management tools are also a means to assimilate information. Typically, information is

pieced together by identifying the common denominators in the entire data. Thus patient social

security number is a way to identify all related health information. Similarly, spatial co-ordinates

help to organize all geographical information.

When a diverse range of information is collated at one point and can be cross-referenced with all

related information, its assimilation and processing becomes possible. Text, numbers and

pictures can be put juxtaposed to bring into relief unnoticed relationships. Data can be pieced

together to uncover the big picture and to identify patterns. Similarly, statistical software can be

used to find correlations in the data. Storage technologies can help do this on the fly. Fraud

detection is one application that is enabled by cross-referencing of data available in a single

repository.

1.3 Value of Storage—Dissemination

Finally, dissemination of information is more convenient, faster and has a wider reach with

storage technologies. This is particularly true with storage area networks; several copies of

information can be mirrored at several sites and with additional aids can be converted into several

formats. Traditional mediums like analog TV are unable to offer the same content in any other

format. Digital content, on the other hand, can be adapted for its presentation of several wireless

devices or other devices2.

Museums, rare books and historical archives are striking illustration of illiquid information. Today,

the global mirroring feature of storage technologies, a service offered by Scale Eight among

others, has enabled not only their centralized storage but also their worldwide dissemination

(www.scale8.com/customers/Octavo_Case_Study.pdf).

The applications of storage are rooted in these generic attributes of archiving, retrieval,

assimilation, and dissemination that have been enhanced by digitization and networks that

interconnect storage devices. Ease of archiving, for example, encourages the preservation of old

movies that would be lost by deterioration of silver halide films. The cost of maintaining large

archives would not be bearable if footage was not conveniently retrieved such as by natural

language keywords3. Similarly, geographic data and related traffic information would be hard to

use for logistics management if could not be rapidly aggregated, assimilated and disseminated to

truck drivers.

1.4 Storage and Wireless Applications

Wireless Internet users have potentially a greater need for gathering, archiving, assimilating,

retrieving and speedy dissemination of information. Sources of information are more scattered

when data is gathered from mobile professionals and needs to be aggregated to be of use by the

entire enterprise. Field forces will be unable to plan their schedules unless all data of all pending

orders is available at one point.

Rapid assimilation is essential since mobile staff often execute tasks with short lead times. Tasks,

such as ambulatory healthcare, are most efficient when staff on board is alerted about a patient’s

past conditions as the event happens. Similarly, mobile sales staffs require information on

demand and inventory condition in real time to serve orders.

2 See the case study of Generic Media for the method for serving data for a variety of players in the streaming media context. 3 See the case study on E-Motion

Just as important is the rapid retrieval of information for mobile staff. A typical instance is the

need to provide documentation in the sale of pharmaceuticals. Mobile sales staff doesn’t carry all

the documents; it would rather remotely access them from a storage device and print them on a

customer site4.

Finally, dissemination of information to wireless users implies that content has to be distributed to

several different types of devices. When content is available at a single point, its format can be

converted to suit the needs of each device.

1.5 Managing Storage Area Networks

The very size of storage systems throws up entirely new challenges for managing information.

Storage management software is required to spread the load across the numerous disks, tapes

and optical disks across a storage area network to minimize time delays and costs. Variants of

this software manage replication of data in geographically dispersed sites, back up of data to

ensure its availability and recovery when the data is lost. All this has to be achieved on platforms

as diverse as Windows NT and UNIX. The liquidity of information depends on the Application

Program Interfaces (APIs) that help to interconnection with the broad variety of operating systems

that are deployed on storage area networks. This is very largely an unfinished task in the

management of storage area networks.

For storage systems to be more than archives or tape systems, information has to flow from disks

to applications in a predictable and speedy manner to be useful to applications. Storage

management software ensures that information flows to applications in an efficient manner. Tivoli,

for example, develops software to move data from storage disks to applications quickly.

Other types of software manage the quality of service on a network are also required for industrial

scale application of storage area networks. These are required to monitor and report on

performance or the extent to which service level agreements have been met5.

Content Management software is slow to grow because data definitions are hard to standardize.

Individual companies have developed content management software for silos and have a variety

4 See our case study on ViaFone 5 See our case studies of Storability and Broadstream

of data definitions embedded in their legacy systems. In a shared environment like a storage area

network, the data definitions have to be understood by several different types of users.

Fortunately, XML enables the sharing of data independent of the particular representation of data.

Internet storage technologies need the efficiencies brought about by storage management

software, management software and content management software to drive the adoption of

applications such as especially Internet broadcasting. The pace of development of storage

software has been relatively slow and has set the limits to diffusion of storage-enabled

applications.

Storage technologies also need high-speed networks to communicate over longer distances.

Hardware implemented communications systems like Fiber channel have distance limitations.

Other software-implemented protocols such as TCP/IP are much slower since they correct for

errors. The dissemination of information over longer distances will be constrained till that

happens.

2 TECHNOLOGY

The key to the ability to aggregate information in colossal repositories is increasing efficiency of

networks. Data would have to be stored locally, within or near a server, if networks are not

efficient enough for retrieval from a remote location. In the early stages of information

management, data was stored in the memory of the server.

Storage within the memory of a server strains the processing power of a server for larger volumes

of data. Consequently, rising volumes of traffic impair the ability of servers to operate applications

efficiently. Also, servers have more than one source of failure when they combine the functions of

operating an application and storage.

The combined efficiency of servers and storage devices is increased and their downtime is

lowered by specialization; the functions of running an operating system (and user applications)

are separated from that of the management of files. Storage becomes the function of a

specialized device separated from a server.

The division of functions can also be between multiple storage devices and multiple servers

working together. A switch routs the traffic when a cluster of storage devices works with a group

of servers.

2.1 Beyond SCSI

The early development of storage area networks took place with parallel SCSI (Small Computer

System Interface) networking technology. This technology has bus architecture; a single server is

electrically connected to a corresponding storage device. Since servers in the SCSI world work

jointly with only a single storage device, any loss of capacity necessarily involves downtime. The

data transfer rates cannot be any more than the speed of disks because they cannot retrieve data

from any more than a single storage device.

SCSI has other limitations like the number of addresses and distances that it can cover. In a 16-

bit environment, it can have no more than 15 devices. The number of devices on the network

limits its scale of operations. SCSI also cannot operate at more than 25 meters of distance. SCSI,

therefore, does not effectively disseminate information.

Fiber channel networks overcome the limitations of SCSI type of networks. They are capable of

switching (besides a ring technology) so that a cluster of servers works with a corresponding

array of storage devices. Since each port on the switch can be connected to another switch, the

number of addresses can be increased without any limit. Inter-switch connections, however,

come at the cost of a latency penalty that is incurred as traffic flows from one port to another. In

addition, failure on any one port has a domino effect on all interlinked ports.

Therefore, the building blocks of larger scale storage area networks are directors or switches with

more than 32 ports. Directors are indispensable for applications such as rich media, which require

parallel retrieval of data to reduce the latencies involved in recovering data from disks.

Companies such as McData (www.mcdata.com) specialize in the design and production of such

switches.

Another major difference between fiber channel networks and the SCSI type of topology is that

the former inter-connects servers and devices by a network and data transfers don’t take place by

electrical signals. Consequently, devices can be added, as demand grows, to the network without

interrupting operations just as appliances are connected in a grid.

Finally, the devices connected to a Fiber Channel Network can be spread over longer distances

over as much as 10,000 meters. It is possible to offer disaster management services on such

networks as data can be replicated on several devices such that they are dispersed

geographically.

The hardware capabilities of fiber channel networks have to be complimented by software

management tools before services such as disaster management or replication of data can even

be offered. Storage virtualization software helps to achieve these functions.

Storage area networks (SANS) have had less success than its precursor, the Network Attached

Storage (NAS) systems, in developing the file systems required to manage large networks. Some

companies such as StorageNetworks (www.storagenetworks.com) have implemented file

systems to manage storage area networks for large enterprises from behind the firewall. Efforts to

manage an open storage area network have been initiated by Hitachi Data Systems

(www.hds.com) and IBM.

2.2 Networks and Scalability

In the technical literature, more so in the technical marketing literature, facetious distinctions

between SANS and NAS have been drawn based solely on the features of the technology, SANs

are seen to move blocks of data while NAS manages a file system. The fact is that a NAS server

manages a file system, which in turn maps blocks of data and helps to manage their flow.

Conversely, files systems or storage virtualization software manage the flow of blocks of data on

a SAN. If there is any distinction between the two systems, this is a difference between

tweedledee and tweedledum!

Similarly, SANS and NAS are distinguished based on the networking technology that

interconnects the devices; fiber optics are associated with Fiber Channel and Ethernet with NAS.

The reality is that Fiber Channel, implemented as it is in hardware, has a lower latency rate while

Gigabyte Ethernet costs less but has a higher latency rate. Storage area networks, with their

larger volumes, have a lower tolerance for latency. On the other hand, NAS processes lower

volumes and can make-do with relatively higher latency rates. There is nothing to prevent SANs

from using Ethernet networks and vice versa for NAS.

The essential distinction between SAN and NAS is that the former has a separate network for

storage devices while NAS devices are attached to an existing LAN. It is this property of SANs

that enables it to scale and to provide other services such as continuity, disaster recovery and

load management.

SANs can potentially operate at a much larger scale of operation than NAS because devices can

be added to a network without disrupting ongoing operations. The management of larger volumes

of data would not be possible without the virtualization software that helps to manage the

allocation of data between devices and the movement of data between them on storage area

networks.

A Network Attached Storage (NAS), a stripped down variant of a file server, manages data flow

from storage devices independent of an application server. The storage device appears as an

additional drive in the directory on the operating system of an application. Redirector software

manages the data flow from the NAS to the client. As storage devices are added, the software

directing I/O calls from the client have to be adjusted to manage disk space, which involves some

downtime unless there is no overlap in the data stored in the storage device added and the

previous one.

On the other hand, a Storage Area Network is intended to expand seamlessly without incurring

downtime as capacity is increased. The file system resides on a server and directly allocates

blocks of data on disk space. Any addition to capacity is managed by a volume manager, which

allocates data to storage capacity. As SANs evolve further, the file management function is

undertaken by in-band or out-bands appliances specially meant for the management of the

network.

The slow progress in developing virtualization software for SANS accounts for its lower rate of

adoption compared to NAS which works with proven file systems. Operating systems for SANs,

especially in heterogeneous environments, are currently under negotiation and development.

In the NAS environment, network protocols for joining storage devices with servers on a network,

the Network File System (NFS) and the Common Internet File System (CIFS), provide a means to

share files with a variety of computing environments and to ensure security when transactions

take place on the network. The NFS6 for example, automatically mounts the servers file system

onto the client where it seems like a local directory. By requiring a client to have an account with

the NAS server ensures security. Before granting access to a server, the client’s identity is

checked.

By contrast, the progress in the development of standards for interoperability in Storage Area

Networks is much slower7. In 2001, vendors like Hitachi Data Systems, IBM and Brocade took the

initiative to plug the holes in fiber channel SAN systems. The key issues are fiber channel’s

vulnerability to security breaches. In addition, SAN systems currently manage networks by out-of-

band monitoring systems using the Simple Network Management Protocol.

SANs can play a vital role in lowering the failure rate in running applications since traffic can be

spread over several disks. Typically, the building block of a SAN or a NAS is a RAID (Redundant

Array of Independent Disks, a RAID controller manages traffic locally) or a JBOD (Just a Bunch of

Disks without any intelligence) or a collection of disks which don’t have local intelligence and all

data management is done by the file system. RAID stores blocks of data, which are divided into

smaller units called stripes of 512 bytes. The option to spread traffic over several disks helps in

load balancing and redirecting traffic when any one of them fails.

Spikes in traffic, common with e-commerce or rich media applications, are better managed when

data flows are spread over several disks and balanced centrally by software residing on the RAID

controller or in the file system. Capacity additions can take place incrementally in step with

demand because they don’t have to be lumped with server investments. Installations of additional

disks are not disruptive since they can be plugged into a group of operating disks much like

appliances are to a utility network. Although some disks are redundant, capacity utilization is

better than with server-attached storage due to the benefits of load balancing.

6 (http://uwsg.ucs.indiana.edu/usail/network/nfs/overview.html) 7 This is discussed in detail in a white paper at (www.brocade.com/san/white_papers/pdf/EvolvingSANStandards03072000.pdf).

Although SANs are meant to be a means to manage larger networks than NAS, the reality is that

the adoption rate of the latter is much higher. One reason for this is that protocols for integrating

networks with devices in a NAS are proven while corresponding protocols for integrating SANs

are currently under negotiation and development.

In the absence of interoperability, the benefits of aggregation of information sources such as

centralized management are built on proprietary standards. Consequently, applications

deployment is hamstrung by the inability to assimilate information from diverse sources.

SANS facilitate dissemination of information by their ability to mirror data on geographically

dispersed storage devices. The information can then be viewed simultaneously by an audience

such as the global employees of a company listening to their CEO. Internet broadcasting

becomes technically viable with spatially distributed storage capacity

SANs also play a vital role in the preservation of information by placing them at a number of sites.

By replicating information at geographically dispersed regions, any loss of information that can

take place by natural or technical disasters is undone by recovering information from another site.

Communication networks determine the geographical reach of storage area networks while

storage management tools affect the latency, speed of recovery and other services that

consumers can have. Lower latencies are crucial, for example, for delivery of rich media

applications.

The value of stacks of information is high when it can be retrieved with low rates of latency. The

efficiency of retrieval of information is limited by the speeds at which disks operate. IBM, for

example, admitted that disk speeds are not increasing at rates comparable to other components

of the system such as network speeds and processor MIPs. In the near term future, IBM foresees

disk speeds rising to 15K-25K RPM, incorporated in its Shark products, but probably no more.

Consequently, companies are looking to parallel processing of information which involves routing

of data through several ports working simultaneously (as profiled in our case study of

DataDirectNet).

When stored on disks, data is saved in blocks of information, which are subdivided as stripes

when they are written on disks. Before the stored data can be transmitted, it is reassembled as

blocks before it reaches a network node. Inevitably, the process of recalling blocks of information

and reassembling them involve mechanical delays.

Storage network management companies are overcoming these problems with metadata or

mapping information that reduces the time delays in identifying blocks of information and

reassembling them.

Networks can be clogged when numerous streams of data are accessed simultaneously. Such

an eventuality is very likely when a very high number of customers are drawn to the same

information, as was the case when Americans wanted to read Kenneth Star’s report on the

Internet. Storage management companies are learning to create master files that can be cached

at a central point before customers’ access it (as profiled in our case study on Digital Fountain).

Additional inefficiencies are incurred when content has to be presented to several different media

players at the customer end. Content has to be transmitted in a way that is appropriate for each

of these players which taxes bandwidth capacity. New technologies are emerging that create

master copies that convert the content for each player on the fly (see our case study on Generic

Media).

When data is transmitted for wireless applications, it has to be transmitted to several towers

where they are close to the users of mobile devices. If this is done serially, the delays will be

enormous. Storage management companies are finding ways to transmit data in parallel streams.

In the future, the battleground in the storage industry will be storage management software. The

design of file systems can help to increase the productivity of already installed storage systems.

This can be achieved, for example, by varying the size of stripes depending on the nature of the

traffic, by caching in real time so that data does not necessarily have to come from the disk. Other

possibilities include the management of the metadata. If the metadata is also read from the disk,

the disk reader moves back and forth from the file data to the metadata. Some companies have

incorporated the metadata into the file system so that data is accessed directly. Yet another way

is to organize related data contiguously so that it can be retrieved quickly. File systems can also

be designed to speed up retrieval from tapes by keeping their metadata in the file system8.

8 More information of innovations from emerging companies can be found at

3 STORAGE AND WIRELESS APPLICATIONS

Storage sub-systems, per se, provides services such as back up, archiving, recovery, replication

and mirroring which do not have a direct bearing for applications. However, storage sub-systems,

together with storage management software, are an aid to information management. We will

discuss, in individual cases, the specific impact storage has on applications

3.1 Storage and Digital Photography

Consumer fulfillment with digital photography is intertwined with storage technologies. The

attributes that consumers value in photography include besides the quality of photographs, ease

of editing, the ability to share them with family and friends as extensively as possible and with the

least effort, preserve them and to retrieve them when required. These services are offered by

companies such as Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com/index.jsp), Kodak’s

(www.ofoto.com/Welcome.jsp) and Pixel Magic Imaging (www.pmimaging.com).

Storage needs increase as the quality of digital photographs improves with higher resolution and

superior color texture. CD-ROMs or other removable media have met the needs of early adopters

but the demand for Internet storage will increase at higher levels of usage and as photographs

are transmitted over networks.

Image size of digital photographs, in terms of data, is large even when compression techniques

are utilized. This is because light, after it filters through a lens, is recorded by photosensitive

pixels in shades of black and white. The resolution improves with the increase in the numbers of

pixels.

Furthermore, colors are superimposed on the black and white image. A combination of green, red

and blue filters (twice as many green filters as red and blue) intercede the light falling on pixels;

computers then estimate the actual texture of the color from the data on hues of all the

neighboring filters. The entire process is data intensive and requires storage.

The equivalent of the quality achieved by silver-halide film requires a resolution of 2.1 million

pixels9, which is about 2MB for each image. Insertion of colors in the right proportion further adds

to the file size increasing it to 6 MB. The storage capacity of most personal computers will begin

to run out after a few rolls are shot. Some of the burden of storage is relieved by compression. A

standard such as JPEG can achieve compression rates of 20:1 efficiently but photographs begin

to lose their quality beyond that stage. Even so, each roll of film would require about 6 MB of

space, which is still very high.

Currently, users have the ability to use flash media with their digital cameras. However, the flash

media has a limited capacity and a very expensive medium to store data. The data from flash

media has to be inevitably transferred to a computer or other storage media. Consequently,

storage is required especially as volumes increase.

Once digital photographs have been stored, they can be conveniently edited with tools such as

Adobe Photoshop. On the other hand, editing of traditional photographs requires sophisticated

dark room techniques before changes can be made on them if at all.

People cherish photographs because they can share glimpses of their lives with friends and

families and preserve them as mementos for themselves. Storage enables sharing conveniently

when it is stored on the Internet. More consumers share their photographs as they take recourse

to the Internet, e-mail and disks to store their images. By the year 2001, 92.8% of digital still

camera owners shared their pictures compared to 77.7% in 199910

Perhaps, the greatest advantage of digital photography used in conjunction with storage is the

ability to use metadata or the data about identification of photographs. Metadata keeps a record

of when, where and by whom the photograph was taken, the location, subject and other

information that can help to retrieve a photograph. In industries like law and regulation, the

preservation of visual records for long periods is critical and hard to achieve because films

deteriorate and are hard to retrieve11.

9 Quoted from http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1998/09/wang/ 10 International Imaging Industry Association, Fact Sheet. 11 For more information on the use of metadata in digital photography, see “The Power of Metadata Is Propelling Digital Imaging Beyond the Limitations of Conventional Photography”

Wireless photography and storage have a symbiotic relationship in the enterprise space. It helps

in reducing the tedium of documentation in the insurance industry and the real estate industry.

Companies such as Flashpoint (http://www.flashpoint.com/home.html) provide digital

photography solutions, in partnership with Sprint, for transfer of images over telecom network and

are stored. A typical case is the use of wirelessly transmitted photography for faster damage

assessment in insurance claims. Similarly, digital photographs are used in the real estate industry

to provide a glimpse of properties that customers can evaluate.

In the consumer space, storage can potentially created a mobile album, i.e., resident on a

network which can be shared impromptu with friends and family. However, this would have to

await a ubiquitous network of the kind the International Imaging Industry Association is working

on (http://www.i3a.org/pr_11_13_01.html).

Storage and sharing of photographs involves trade-offs that have not been satisfactory for the

consumers. Two forms of compression have been commonly used with JPEG and they are

lossless and lossy compression. Lossless compression simply means that data is not lost as a

result of compression so that economy in storage is considerably less than with lossy

compression. However, lossy compression is at the risk of loss of data that may not, at the outset,

seem essential and will not cause visible loss of quality. For example, data representing blue sky

in a picture would be identical and saves storage if it is trimmed. The algorithms that make the

adjustments may not, however, be understood by another program and over time important

information will be lost permanently. JPEG 2000, a new standard, has higher compression rates

and it streams data in waves so that users can choose the resolution they need thereby saving

them unanticipated loss of quality that they can experience with lossy compression.

3.2 Unified Messaging, Voice Information and Vehicle Telematics

We have looked at Unified Messaging, Voice Information services and Vehicle Telematics as a

single category of inter-related services. Whereas these three businesses, in their infancy,

existed as separate businesses, they are now converging into one. Vehicle Telematics is

available from International Imaging Industry Association. Kodak has its own scheme for metadata available at http://www.kodak.com/US/en/developers/tools/02_pmt.jhtml

indistinguishable from mobile services when the same device can be used in and out of a car,

together with Bluetooth devices, as will be the case with services offered by emerging

competitors like Mobile Aria (www.mobilearia.com) in the future. Messaging, information

services and even entertainment can be provided as a single package of service for mobile

customers whether in the consumer segment or the enterprise space.

Messages, whether they are e-mail, SMS, voice mail or fax, are distinguished by their format or

their metadata. They can be converted from one message type to another by changing their

metadata. The conversion of their content from text, like e-mail, into voice mail or vice versa is

enabled by speech-to-text or text-to-speech technologies. A text message does not have to be

read but it can be heard by the recipient.

Speech technologies play a key role in the convergence of these businesses. Vehicle Telematics,

in its early days, was a call center business and offered, besides safety and security services,

location information relevant to drivers. In the future, ATX Technologies

(http://www.atxtechnologies.com/) will continue to offer safety and security services, as a call

center function, while location information will be speech enabled.

The product mix of telematics services providers will expand to include information and message

services in the package they offer to customers.

Multi-media will further blur the distinctions between these businesses. The technology required

to deliver video messages or attachments of music files with messages will not be a whole lot

different from that required to offer entertainment to car owners. The convergence of

entertainment with messaging and information is possible as large media files can be

downloaded (to multi-media player which also reads messages and plays voice information

messages) using Bluetooth or 802.11 technologies.

Some companies are beginning to take advantage of potential economies of scope inherent in

the emerging technologies. Ibasis (www.ibasis.com), provides both unified messaging and

speech enabled information services Comverse includes entertainment as well messaging and

voice enabled information services (www.comverse.com/solutions/index.htm). Telematics Service

providers such as ATX Technologies (http://www.atxtechnologies.com/) and Mobile Aria

(http://www.mobilearia.com/) are working on plans to offer multi-media telematics services over

the next 18 to 24 months. Delphi Automotive Systems

(http://www.delphiauto.com/products/manufacturers/multimedia/) and Visteon

(http://www.visteon.com/technology/automotive/Multi_ICES.html) have developed

equipment that can be used for all these three services including music and video, which will

considerably increase the demand for storage intensive products.

From the supply side, storage technologies help in reaping the economies of scope to the extent

that the data for all these services can be aggregated at a single point in a data store. The costs

of storing messages, as we will see, account for a substantial proportion of the costs of unified

messaging. Technically, its possible to also store voice files and media rich files in a single store

but this is hard to achieve when content is received from multiple sources.

3.2.1 Storage and Unified Messaging

For the sake of expositional clarity, we will discuss the role storage plays in the provision of each

of these services separately beginning with unified messaging. Storage occupies center stage in

web based messaging systems such as those built around the Internet Message Access Protocol

(IMAP), or similar web based e-mail access system. Unlike the more commonly used Post Office

Protocol 3 (POP3), IMAP is a designed to access files, using a web browser, from any location

and at any fixed or wireless device.

Unified messaging requires a single repository to efficiently convert a message from one type,

such as voice mail, to another like e-mail. If the server architecture were retained, messages

would have to be reproduced in both the voice-mail server as well as the e-mail server before e-

mail or a phone client can access them. Wasteful reproduction of messages increases as the

number of channels of access increase.

When messages are centralized in a single repository, they can be readily converted to another

medium. Messages are converted from voice to text and vice versa by speech recognition and

text-to-speech technologies and Optical Character Recognition for conversion of fax messages.

From the consumer end, access from a common repository becomes essential when messages

are accessed from more than one location. Post Office Protocol 3 (POP 3), the most commonly

used protocol, gained currency when the desktop was the only client. Once downloaded, files can

only be accessed locally from the desktop client. Messages can, theoretically, be accessed on-

line from anywhere, with POP 3, if they are saved on the server. Users would, however, find this

inconvenient, unless they have a file management system, which reports on previous activity.

Protocols such as IMAP provide a common visual interface to all files and folders stored on a

message box on the Internet. This is particularly useful when files of different kinds, text, voice,

fax, short messaging and video, are integrated to provide a common view. It has the ability to

provide status report of any previous action undertaken on the file.

Above all, IMAP affords an opportunity to search and retrieve files of his or her choice or a subset

of a file such that the more important sections can be retrieved on bandwidth poor wireless

devices or attachments can be viewed at a later time. When POP3 is used as an e-mail client, all

the pending messages from a server have to be downloaded. Users have no choice but to view

the entire message and the attachments including voice or video files.

By aggregating all messages in a single data store, service providers can economize on a variety

of administrative overheads that are otherwise required to manage messages in their separate

mediums such as directories for voice mailboxes and e-mail servers and the costs of maintaining

user data, operating system and facilities management. Instead, a single directory, the preferred

option is Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), is used for the administration of all types

of messages.

In a component based messaging software, the management of the capacity of the data store

takes place independent of other pieces within the messaging system such as the processing

power of servers. The message store can be a RAID, NAS or SAN so that the e-mail storage can

be transferred into another disk when any one of them breaks down. Replication of data ensures

that any break down does not lead to loss of information. Similarly, the disk capacity can be

raised as volumes increase without any interruption in services. Service providers can also offer

classes of services based on the users’ tolerance for downtime.

3.2.2 Storage and Voice Information services

We will now look at the role storage plays in the provision of voice information services.

Traditionally, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems were used to automate some of the call

center functions. The tedium of using prompts on a touch-tone phone discouraged the use of IVR

except for a few functions like preliminary instructions.

Customers can now use natural language keywords to search a storehouse of information and

the response is read to them from any telephone. They can be productive in their spare moments,

such as when they are driving or walking, by looking up their e-mail or calendar. Speech

recognition allows them to do this even when they are driving without risking an accident that is a

common experience with the use of a cellular phone.

The ease of retrieval with speech recognition technologies has encouraged companies to offer a

broader range of voice information services. Companies can automate responses to routine

functions such as arrival time for trains, flight departures at airlines or descriptions of promotions.

Just as speech recognition technologies are more convenient than IVR for the consumers, the

introduction of VoiceXML applications lowers the cost of deployment of such services. Whereas

IVR technologies require a separate infrastructure, VoiceXML can be integrated with their text

web infrastructure and their content can be converted into voice.

Voice files are large, ten times the size of an equivalent text file, and their volumes are increasing

with increasing adoption. Storage is required not only to manage large quantities of data but also

its variable demand. An individual company is less likely to fully utilize its infrastructure and would

incur higher costs than if it were to outsource its services. As an example, retail stores receive a

disproportionate number of calls during the Christmas season compared to the rest of the year

when call traffic is more moderate. If the facilities are designed to cater to peak level of demand,

they will be underutilized for the rest of the year. Alternatively companies can invest in a smaller

size infrastructure at the risk of losing goodwill during the holiday season.

Concurrently, the emergence of web services and web servers has separated the function of

application use and the operation of the back-end infrastructure. It is now possible to house the

infrastructure in a data center. When the data storage infrastructure is outsourced, it can begin to

take advantage of the redundancy of the Internet. The access to storage facilities on the Internet

affords an opportunity to scale the size of the infrastructure as the demand grows.

3.2.3 Storage and Telematics

Telematics is composed of several services including safety and security services that have been

the staple of telematics services so far. Increasingly, voice information services are gaining

ground especially because drivers need to access information without holding a wireless device

in their hand. Finally, entertainment services are valued for drivers to use their time.

Storage is required as the product mix of telematics services is increasingly multi-media.

3.3 Location based services

Geographical information can be represented as either vector data or raster data. Vector data is

shown as a set of co-ordinates, X,Y and or Z, that are useful for depicting quantitative information

on maps. Raster data is depicted as cells (bit-mapped) and is useful for graphical representation

of geographical information. Digital representation of satellite imagery, aerial photography is done

in raster mode. Vector data and raster data cannot be used in combination except when they are

juxtaposed.

Currently, the GIS/location based services industry generally utilizes vector data since it

economizes on storage and is useful for measurements. However, raster data is visually

appealing and its use can be effective in industries like the real estate or the travel industry when

a picture of the surroundings can aid customers in their decision-making process. Raster data,

however, requires a great deal of storage space which increases as the resolution improves.

Storage technology will play an increasingly important role in location-based services (referred to

as GIS in the non-commercial world) as satellite imagery of finer resolution becomes available.

Currently, satellite imagery of a resolution as high as one meter is already available12 and

licenses for satellites capable of half a meter resolution have been granted13. Location based

services are potentially possible with pictures of one meter resolution since streets, parking lots,

12 http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/press_kits/factsheet.htm 13 http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/satellite_licenses_001218.html

movement of cars becomes visible14. With data of 100 MB per picture15, terabytes of storage are

required for preserving imagery of such high resolution is made available16.

The demand for raster data, satellite imagery and other remote sensing data will grow when such

data is moved faster from their source to the point of consumption. Companies like AXS

Technologies (http://www.axs-tech.com/index_blue.php) offer parallel processing technologies

to retrieve information rapidly from disks. It has also partnered with Inciscent

(www.inciscent.com) to provide wireless access to this data.

Location based services (LBS), as they are known in the wireless world or Geographical

Information Systems (GIS) grow as increasing number of data types are linked to spatial

information. Geographical Information Systems link a variety of data types by tying them to their

spatial characteristics (http://www.cubewerx.com/). For example, the longitude/latitude, zip code

can be utilized to link information on assets of utilities. Due to high costs of storage and

bandwidth, the commercial sector makes limited use of raster data as well as satellite imagery

and aerial photography.

Furthermore, geographical content is created by numerous entities such as city governments,

state governments and federal government. Other information such as yellow pages is received

from telecommunications companies and public and private sectors produce satellite imagery and

aerial photography. This data is now conveniently available from two major clearinghouses-the

Federal Geospatial Data Committee- as well as the Geography Network, established by ESRI

(www.esri.com). Storage area networks help to move data in real time to its consumption point.

Modern day Geographical Information Systems (GIS) visually illustrate location information by

portraying them on maps. Bald numbers from databases and statistical series are rendered

visually on maps for intelligibility. For example a database query on income distribution can be

displayed on maps showing neighborhoods with income classes or statistical data such as

population density can be displayed on maps. Retail chains use such information to determine

the location of each of their stores and correlate them with their sales data. 14 For an illustration of the images possible with one meter resolution, see http://www.estec.esa.nl/ceos99/papers/p154.pdf 15 op cit 16 http://www.pitt.edu/~oduibhne/RIVERS%20OF%20DATA_00.07.06.htm

Satellite imagery plays a variety of roles depending on the nature of the application. In the

commercial world, the most common applications of satellite imagery are for risk assessment in

the insurance industry and asset tracking in the transportation industry. Transportation companies

typically use satellite imagery to aid navigation of their trucks in less familiar territories using

wireless devices (http://www.objectfx.com/). Similarly, telecommunications companies use

location specific data on their cells and central offices for use by their field forces. The insurance

industry uses map data to ascertain susceptibility of a clients’ property to natural disasters for

determining risk and premiums17.

Much paper work in asset management is saved when GIS is utilized. Utilities, for example, have

to respond to enquiries from contractors who need to dig in a particular geographical region. In

the past, utilities had to wade into their paper documents and painstakingly ensure that none of

their assets would be affected. Today, contractors can look at web hosted GIS databases to find

out for themselves whether any harm will be done to utility assets by their digging18.

Wireless location based services have become possible with the advent of Geographical

Positioning Systems and E-911 identification that FCC mandates. In the future, location aware

devices will enable automatic transmission of information triggered by events.

By bringing together scattered data, GIS information systems pave the way to centralizing

information and to take advantage of the scale economies afforded by storage technologies for

archiving and retrieval of the information at relatively lower costs19.

3.4 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Customer relationship management databases have grown from the gigabyte range to the

terabyte range in recent years. Information is now collected from inside and outside the enterprise

on a broader range of parameters and more frequently. Storage technologies are required for

supporting CRM databases in such a scenario; companies such as SAS (www.sas.com),

working in collaboration with EMC and Teradata (www.teradata.com), working in collaboration

17 For a case study, http://www.mapinfo.com/community/free/library/insurance_wp.pdf 18 http://www.mapinfo.com/community/free/library/pocs_casestudy.pdf 19 A sample of location based services can be found at http://www.jlocationservices.com/MarketShowcase/DeployedLocationServices.html#

with LSI Logic (http://www.lsilogic.com/index2.html) are currently the major players in the

larger size CRM databases.

For the larger databases, information is collected not only from an individual department but also

from related divisions in the enterprise. The early CRM databases typically collected data on

orders, billing and collections. They evolved by incorporating related enterprise information from

inter-dependent departments, such as production, thereby enlarging the size of the databases.

CRM databases with operating information such as production, sales and inventory become more

valuable when they are placed in a context. Data on expenditures on music, for example, is

meaningful when seen together with the socio-economic psychographics of individual segments

of the population. Beyond the early adopter stage, companies compile secondary data on

demographics to decipher patterns that are useful in strategic planning.

Also, companies have realized the need to retain their customers instead of incurring the costs of

customer acquisition. They see an advantage in collating historical information on their customers

in order to find patterns in their purchasing behavior that can provide clues to gain their loyalty.

Typically, CRM data is used to identify customers who account for the highest share of

consumption, their responses to campaigns and any product features added to products.

The diversity of information available in CRM databases has given rise to business intelligence,

which is used for deciphering patterns such as segmentation within the customer base. The data

is used to offer customers related products that fit their profile. Their responses to promotions

reveal their price sensitivity. Initially, business intelligence concerned business analysts who used

the information to communicate to senior executives of a company.

Increasingly, companies have realized much greater gains are possible by using business

intelligence to alert their staff in real time. This is particularly true for applications such as logistics

management, i.e., optimizing when conflicting demands are made on time of delivery and cost for

shipping goods. Similarly, seasonal fluctuations in demand for industries such as the travel

industry need quick feedback on demand patterns in specific groups. The dissemination of

information, from centralized repositories, is possible with wireless devices. Mobile staff is alerted

to critical performance data of the company as well as actions of competitors that may be

revealed by say sales data. Business Objects (http://www.businessobjects.com) is one such

company that offers business intelligence services using wireless devices.

The lead times for collection, assimilation and communication of data are lower when data is

collected for real time decision making. Consequently, databases increase in size as data is

collected more frequently.

Data warehouses or corporate information factories, as their larger versions are known, are the

radars of enterprises guiding the movements of their road warriors. The size and complexity data

warehouses behoove their reliable management. Storage area networks provide the redundancy

to manage rising volumes of data and lower the downtime by replicating them at several sites.

3.5 STORAGE AND MEDICAL APPLICATIONS

Fragmentation of workflow is commonplace in the health care industry and is the root cause of

high rates of medical errors, much of the cost escalation and deteriorating quality that has fed

political passions in the USA. The discontinuity exists at four different levels; within departments

of a hospital or a medical group, between branches of a group, across institutions within the

larger healthcare enterprise and geographical regions. The current effort to integrate workflows,

with the help of storage technologies, is within departments of hospitals and medical groups.

The fragmentation of workflows is the cause of paper shuffle, loss of information, time delays as

professionals struggle to collate information and decisions are based on inadequate data as a

result of the discontinuities in the workflow. According to figures collected by the American

Hospital Association, paper work in the medical world takes at least fifty percent of the time on

patient care if not more. Emergency care is the most wasteful with paperwork matching the time

on patient care while skilled nursing takes half the time20

Storage has a potentially vital role in funneling information to a single point, integrating bits of

information, disseminating it to professionals and processes it for decision support. The

companies that lead in leveraging storage technologies for integration of work flows in the health 20 “Patients or Paperwork”, American Hospital Association, 2001

care industry are General Electric Medical Systems

(http://www.gemedicalsystems.com/it_solutions/index.html), in collaboration with EMC, and

Siemens (http://www.smed.com/), Philips

(http://www.medical.philips.com/product_lines/mimit/index.asp) and Agfa

(http://www.agfa.com/healthcare/modelpathpage.php?pageid=1810&type=product), in

collaboration with Storagetek.

One of the first departments to be digitized in the health enterprise has been the radiology

department. Digital imaging yields cost benefits, simply by abandoning the costly processing of

silver halide films, without wrenching restructuring in a health enterprise. The pay-off is larger as

digital archiving is potentially cheaper and the movement of records between departments is

faster. Imaging also crosses departmental boundaries more than any other division of a health

enterprise; it can be requisitioned by outpatient clinics, the operating rooms, intensive care unit,

etc.

In the past, the images had to be moved physically and by trucks when they were transported to

other units within the hospital complex. Storage enabled Picture Archiving and Communications

Systems (PACS) allows health enterprises to deposit the images at a single point and the

associated metadata allows multiple users to access them at several locations. In one

implementation of the project in Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the time from the end of the

procedure to the sign-off stage was reduced from 37.2 hours in 1999 to 2 hours in 200121.

Beyond radiology, much greater productivity benefits are possible in clinical work flows. At this

stage, automation is harder because work processes are more heterogeneous; information is

filtered from the lens of a particular discipline, individual doctors exercise judgment, nurses and

doctors have differing needs and data required in departments such as intensive care is not the

same as in an operating room. Consequently, data definitions are rife with controversy.

21 Presentation by Neil D Johnson, MD

On the other hand, the payoff from clinical information systems is potentially higher as it has an

impact across the health enterprise. A patient could be treated by a general physician followed by

a specialist and examined in the laboratories. At all these levels, paper patient records have to be

shuffled from one point to another22. Similarly, a patient is cared by doctors and nurses and the

record of treatment has to be submitted to insurance for compensation.

Much of the duplication of paperwork can be eliminated by a clinical repository at the center of it.

An electronic patient record helps to access the current and historical clinical information about a

patient. Sharing of information between health providers is the most compelling administrative

and clinical reason for adopting an electronic health record. Productivity benefits are the next

most important perceived benefit from a centralized patient record (see table).

In addition, data centralized in clinical depositories can become the bedrock for decision-support

systems. Doctors are required to choose between a host of patented and generic drugs; they

have to weigh the trade-offs of effectiveness and the price of the drugs. They also need

information on interactions of drugs with allergies. They need data on historical record of patients’

to judge how a drug will affect them. In addition, they need pharmacological data such as side-

effects of drugs as revealed by the latest research as well the drugs covered by the patients’

health insurance coverage. Computerized Physicians Order Entry (CPOE) used information

about the patient and the condition to narrow down the options that doctors have to make23.

Data traverses a variety of institutions in the health industry when it moves from points of origin to

its destination where it is consumed; information originates or flows to research institutions,

hospitals, home care, medical groups and insurance companies. Information has to be presented

in a variety of ways for each client as it moves from one section of the enterprise to another.

Physicians use pharmacological data, clinical information, and imagery and laboratory results for

diagnosis and prescription. Insurance companies, on the other hand, use similar information for

22 A case study describing the benefits of integration is available at http://www.gemedicalsystems.com/monitor/products/info_sys/qsperin_kaiser.html23 An exhaustive review of the evidence on the impact of CPOE and the opportunity costs of not implementing it can be found at http://www.icsi.org/talist.htm

fraud control. The administrative divisions use the same information for billing, charge capture

and consumer retention purposes. Storage plays a useful role in centralizing information and its

reuse by its presentation in a variety of formats.

Wireless applications will potentially play a vital role reducing medical errors, the costs of

gathering data, quality of care and communicating information retrieved from repositories.

According to one estimate, charge capture alone will add 4% to revenues by saving the paper

work24 and the associated reprocessing that routinely happens because physician’s fees are

missed but not that of the hospital. Other applications include reduction of errors in prescription,

vital sign monitoring and retrieval of data from laboratories25.

The increasing automation of clinical workflows will drive wireless applications moving them from

their initial stage of adoption to widespread usage in the health industry. Medical errors can be

reduced when physicians have a ready reference to the deluge of data on prescriptions, drugs,

patient information, drug interactions, insurance formularies, etc. eProcrates

(www.epocrates.com/products) specializes in applications that provide ready reference to

information on drugs.

Similarly, Allscripts Healthcare solutions (www.allscripts.com/ahcs/index.htm) offers solutions that

allow physicians to use electronic pens to write prescriptions and transmit them directly to

pharmacies, automatically check against the formularies data and for drug interactions. Many

medical errors take place because pharmacies are unable to understand a physician’s

handwriting or they are unable to recall information on interactions of drugs and allergies.

Patients and pharmacies also frequently check back with physicians when drugs are not listed on

an insurance company’s formularies.

24 Quoted from http://www.patientkeeper.com/download/whitepapers/mgma_panel.pdf, page 5. 25 http://www.patientkeeper.com/about/vision.asp

The ability to reference clinical data quickly is another important reason ofr medical errors.

Skyscape (www.skyscape.com/index/) serves as a repository of all manner of clinical data that is

available to doctors on their handheld computers.

3.6 Rich Media Applications

Media is largely stored in an analog format aside from digital media that is created by

companies, such as Einstein TV (www.einstein.tv/uk/index.asp) that began with broadcasting

science documentaries on the Internet. Streaming media technologies can encode the

accumulated analog media assets for reuse on the Internet, as interactive television and video-

on-demand.

Typically, analog media, viewed in movie halls, is cost-effective for mass audiences and tends to

discourage the production of content for smaller audiences such as schools. Einstein TV offers

science documentaries that are otherwise rarely available on analog media.

Analog media is typically viewed at pre-determined points of time whereas digital media can be

seen on-demand. The media is placed on storage devices that are accessible on the Internet so

that the audience can choose the time to view the content.

Video footage created on analog media has a relatively short shelf life. Films are inherently prone

to damage and their preservation requires specialized skills. Consequently, films could not earn

revenue beyond their short life span, which is often inadequate to cover the initial costs of its

production.

By digitizing and accumulating media at a central location in a storage sub-system, storage

technologies have paved the way for reuse of media assets. Reuse of media content is hampered

by the inability to search its sub-components. Video logging technologies, developed by Virage

(www.virage.com) enable the indexing of video content at a more granular level, which facilitates

the retrieval of sub-components of the footage. Computers use metadata or data that recognizes

specific shots to retrieve sections of the footage. Speech recognition makes it possible to use

natural language keyword to search for specific footage. Reuse of old content can take place, for

example, by creating historical content from accumulated footage.

Similarly, reuse of media is constrained by the format in which it is created. Streaming media is

often created for particular media players. Images are created in particular sizes or their color

hues have to be adapted before they are suitable in another situation. Rich media content on

storage devices can be readily adapted, with related conversion technologies, for their reuse26.

At this juncture, storage technologies are used in work group environments and are usually

directly attached to their servers. In a news broadcasting company like CNN, for example,

footage on an event arrives from several different sources and is edited by a team of journalists

working together. Typically, each member of the team uses a workstation to store the footage that

is used as a reference for consultations. Consequently, an enormous amount of superfluous data

is stored on each workstation or moved on the network when it has to be exchanged.

The possibilities of reuse increase with a storage area network which allows content to be

accessed by several different users who could well be spread out geographically. Einstein TV, a

company based in the United Kingdom, for example, is implementing storage area networks that

will help it to distribute its program content to six different European countries in their own

languages. The conversion of the content to the presentation requirements of each of the

standards and the translation of content in different languages is more efficient when content is

drawn from a single source (as profiled in our case study of IBM/Tivoli).

However, the distribution of video content involves complex system integration capabilities that

have not been fully developed. The ability to manage very large files at an affordable price is the

most important consideration for commercial adoption27.

Applications for storage area networks for media management exist outside of the movie industry

in the management of marketing communications. Typically, enterprises have to communicate

with their agencies and need to do it quickly to manage their campaigns. Location shooting can

very well be far away from the place where the footage is processed and it is often used in a third

place. The ability to centralize content at a single point and mirror it at several different locations

is essential for co-ordination between groups working across geographical boundaries28.

26 See case study on Generic Media 27 The issues have been discussed in the case study on IBM/Tivoli 28 This has been documented in our case study on E-Motion (www.emotion.com)

Once the media is produced, enterprises also need to reuse their content. This becomes

necessary when it has to be published not only in the print media but also the web or on films.

Similarly, the content has to be published in collateral which could be in pdf files, excel sheets or

word files. The content has to be made available in a variety of sizes, colors and resolutions.

Large corporations have to be able to do this not only in a single department but several clients

within the enterprise29

Storage enabled wireless applications currently play an insignificant role. However, the

development work for such applications is underway at Virage in partnership with Packet Video

(http://www.pv.com/). In the short-term, wireless applications will be centered on work group

collaboration in studios to prevent interruptions in the editing process. Beyond a two year period,

media content distribution for sports content seems a real possibility.

4 PROSPECTS OF LEADING APPLICATIONS OF STORAGE

Introduction: Rising from the ashes of Internet business models that sought to earn revenue

from advertisements, turnaround for Internet businesses is contingent on consumers’ willingness

to pay. Rich media, voice enabled services, unified messaging, location based services, customer

relationship management are among the applications that the industry, including wireless

telecommunications industry, sees as compelling enough for consumers to pay.

The search for new business models and compelling mobile applications is relentless despite a

string of setbacks in the mobile computing industry. Future prospects in the 3G wireless might

have been roiled by a botched allocation of the radio spectrum, delayed adoption of new

applications, etc., but the leaders in the industry have not lost their verve. Accenture, IBM, Philips,

Sony among large companies and Brience, Airborne Entertainment among start-ups have

wagered audacious new game plans.

Accenture, the reinvented Andersen Consulting, has promoted a bevy of mobile applications that

its Technology Labs has initiated, its venture capital arm has financed and its consulting group

has positioned in the marketplace

(www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enWeb&xd=services\technology\tech_efuture.xml) The actual

29 See the case study of Mediabin www.mediabin.com

implementation of new wireless applications is happening in collaboration with leaders in

individual segments such as Microsoft (www.avanade.com/global/ground.zero.asp) and Sony

(www.concadia.com/). The entry of Accenture promises to correct the numerous flaws in

business strategy that jeopardized early launches of mobile applications.

In the consumer space, the entry of Sony and Philips would draw skills in branding and market

entry that the technology industry lacked. Like Accenture, Sony is cultivating ecology of wireless

companies (www.550dmv.com/company.php?cid=44), primarily for rich media entertainment

applications, besides the investments of its companies.

Similarly, Philips can galvanize the rich media space especially because it has decided to

promote standards based (MPEG) applications for its streaming media products

(www.digitalnetworks.philips.com/InformationCenter/PhilipsInternet/FArticle.asp?lArticleId=2059&

lNodeId=997)

IBM, together with its associate companies Tivoli and Ascential Software, has a comprehensive

plan for the wireless space (www-3.ibm.com/pvc/), including embedded devices, which includes

mobile platforms, enterprise applications and related storage infrastructure (www.tivoli.com) and

storage management software (www.ascentialsoftware.com). The hallmark of these inter-related

technologies is the web services model that seems to be the answer to problems of achieving

economies of scale and product differentiation in the application services space.

Brience (www.brience.com), among the new breed of start-ups, has leveraged its adaptive mobile

services platform to offer a range of customized mobile applications to enterprise customers.

Finally, Airborne Entertainment (www.airborne-e.com), another start-up, has a unique model of

micro-entertainment tailored for mobile devices.

Similarly, fresh perspectives are emerging to resuscitate the battered Application Service

Providers companies. The scramble for a piece of the ASP space was misplaced because

players could neither achieve scalability nor product differentiation in the absence of close

relationships with the customers. The ASPs utilized a refurbished client-server architecture that

offered the economies of shared infrastructure to its customers. The rub was that it could neither

customize applications for the needs of its customers nor could it scale in the absence of a

generic application.

An emerging group of players in the mobile applications space offer a generic mobile applications

platform which support components of a variety of applications. The mobile platforms are

generic and can be scaled. Mobile applications are customized to meet the individual needs of

customers. The precise needs of customers are identified by Value Added Resellers who bring

their intimate knowledge of the business processes of the customer as well as system integration

capabilities.

The success of the web services model is contingent on assuaging users apprehensions about

security risks. Over the long run, the success of the web services model will pave the way for

taking advantage of the back-end Internet Infrastructure technologies to reap scale economies.

The web services model allows the sharing of an enterprise database for a variety of applications

used within a company. Load management will be facilitated if its can be distributed over inter-

connected servers and storage devices spread over the Internet.

Coincidentally, the crystallization of several inter-related technologies in storage, especially

centralized storage management, content and digital asset management, transmission of

streaming media, web application services, caching and media players could coalesce at an

inflection point in the near term future. These technologies will lower the inefficiencies in the value

chain that includes data storage, content management or editing and indexing for ease of

retrieval of data, and its subsequent transmission over a network, its conversion into web services

on web application servers and their presentation on a variety of user devices. Computer users,

on their media players, already see some of the impact of these technologies. More is to come….

4.1 Prospects of Digital Photography

Consumer digital photography is potentially a large market since it can substitute for silver halide

films, a well-established mass market, and be one of the leading applications expected to drive

the demand for storage in the near term future. The advantages of digital photography are

• Sharing by means of web storage of photographs, e-mail or disks is instantaneous and does

not require multiple duplications or every time it needs to be viewed.

• Photographs can be previewed on a LCD screen and adjustments can be made before a

shot

Consumers save the relatively high costs of silver-halide films and their processing as well as

indirect costs of disposal of hazardous material.

• Digital photographs can be modified electronically to make them available in a variety of

shapes and sizes.

• Automation of picture taking parameters such as aperture adjustment by in-built software

• Digital cameras can facilitate anytime photography because they can be miniaturized to an

extent where they can fit into Palm devices30.

The reality is that digital photography has been still-born and remained a hobby since 1981 when

it was launched by Cannon and Sony. Personal computers have been responsible for reviving its

prospects. However, personal computers as a medium storage have limitations for the very

simple reason that data stored in them is frequently lost as a result of crashes and virus attacks.

At this stage, digital photography is in a state of infancy; a small percentage of households have

reported ownership of digital cameras or use of photographs. Similarly, e-mail more than Internet

storage of photographs is the preferred means of sharing photographs (see table).

The reasons for low rates of adoption of digital photography are as follows.

• Users of traditional cameras can count on taking shots of a fleeting moment (such as a siblings

quarreling) without losing time on getting a camera ready. Digital cameras have to boot up

before a shot can be taken which can be often too late. Not only is the time taken relatively

long, it is also variable31. Similarly, the time lags between successive photographs is variable32

• The large majority of users still own analog computers and they don’t yet have the option to

preserve their photographs in digital format.

30 (http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/corp/georgeFisher/dCarpAdp2000.shtml). 31 http://www.mentor.com/embedded/fulfillment/vrtx_dig_cam.pdf, describes the technical reasons for the delays in taking photographs. 32 Op cit

• Ease of use attributes, such as printing, uploading and filing, are not yet available

Historically, ease of use of cameras has been the primary determinant of the diffusion of digital

cameras. Digital photography will undergo its own transformation before it is acceptable to the

mass market. Some of the developments that will make this possible will be

• Creation of kiosks much like the ubiquitous drop-off centers in pharmacy and other retail stores.

Such centers require both printing, uploading and sharing facilities. The leaders in the field

include companies like Pixel Magic Imaging33 and Applied Science Fiction34

• Windows XP has software features, including now Kodak’s Easyshare system that eases the

uploading of photographs to a PC.

• Common printers such as the HP Inkjet can print digital photographs.

• Products such as the Kodak’s mc3, which combines the function of a video recorder, Internet

music player and a still camera, all in a small device will bring to the market the kind of products

that have popular with the young population.

In the past, the photography market has recorded a trend growth rate of six to seven percent.

Between 1997 and 2000, the growth in emerging markets has declined and has offset the

marginal expansion in the developed markets

(www.kodak.com/country/US/en/corp/georgeFisher/pres990427Carp.shtml) so that the

global growth has remained flat. For the purpose of a medium-term forecast, we will assume that

the historical rates of growth will be baseline estimate for the growth in the photography market.

The growth of the personal photography market is expected to rise in the medium-term future

since the rate of diffusion of digital photography will increase aided by the introduction of simpler

devices in the marketplace. Furthermore, the introduction of photo management features in

Windows XP will make digital photography more visible to general mass of consumers.

4.2 Unified Messaging, Voice Information and Telematics

Unified messaging has not been widely accepted despite the perceived convenience of remote

access, for especially mobile professionals to all types of messages, from a single message box

33 http://www.pmimaging.com/default.cfm?href=products_index&article=press_i3_upgrade 34 http://www.asf.com/

and a full listing of messages viewed from a graphical user interface. In reality, users see a

substantial benefit in integrating only fax messages since is received on a separate machine

removed from the desktop35.

Adoption rates for Unified Messaging are presumed to increase as mobile professionals low even

though mobile staff accounts for the majority of staff in SMEs and a significant minority in large

organizations. According to one survey, mobile staff accounts for 10-30% of the staff in large

organizations and 30-80% of the staff in small and medium scale enterprises36. The experience

from actual deployments indicates that price resistance is stiff 37

Software companies have responded to price resistance by leveraging storage technology to

reduce costs. Emerging solutions not only centralize all types of messages in a single store, they

also use the same storehouse for keeping voice information files. The consequent cost reductions

are expected to be substantial (see case study on Tornado Development).

The story of increasing acceptance of voice information services begins with carriers who see a

value in voice portal services. Qwest began the process with its partnership with BeVocal

(www.bevocal.com) followed by AT&T with Tellme (www.tellme.com) and Hey Anita

(www.heyanita.com) with Korea Telecom, Sprint and Net2Phone. Tornado Development began

with Unified Messaging Services with Telekom Malaysia and has recently acquired Global

Crossing. The extension of voice portal business into vehicle telematics and unified messaging is

a short step once carriers agree to deploy voice portal services. More recently, BeVocal acquired

Bell South, the first wire line customer to sign up for voice information services.

The critical performance requirement of voice portals is simply to recognize a wide range of

queries, words and accents. Furthermore, it has to be able to recognize speech even when there

is background noise. Incoming traffic can be very disparate in situations where consumers using

a mobile phone expect answers to any question. By contrast, questions received by an enterprise

would be more uniform; an airline would typically have to respond to queries about flight

schedules. Self-service, with current best practices, is possible with 50% of the consumer calls

35 See the market research report on http://www.unified-msg.com/frames.html 36 See market research study available at http://www.unified-msg.com/frames.html 37 A review of cost issues can be found at www.bcr.com/voicecon/articles/b0008p44d.asp

compared with 14% when speech recognition technologies were introduced. In the enterprise

space, where queries are more standard, self-service is possible with 97% of the calls.

Demand for voice portals is driven by the need to automate call center functions. Shortages of

call center personnel and their increasing costs will impel increasing recourse to speech

recognition technologies. Benchmark Portal, a giant data warehouse on call centers, recently

collated information on the trends in the call center labor market; its data shows that 22% of the

call centers had to struggle to recruit staff, 50% of the staff was performing at less than the

expected levels and 63% of the call centers had already raised salaries or were planning to do

so38.

Automation of call center functions promises steep increase in productivity and cost reduction.

According to Benchmark Portal, the costs of a call processed by a live agent are $ 1.50 per call

while an automated service costs $ 0.25 per call. The sunk costs in Interactive Voice Response

systems and legacy systems and the unproven nature of speech recognition technologies

prevented companies making a transition to automation. However, relocation of call center

functions to offshore locations, especially India, will put increasing pressure to cut costs on call

centers (www.teleworkingindia.com/Senario.htm#Many%20kinds%20of%20I.T.).

Not all call center functions can be automated since customers will have queries that require

information processing. As an example, customers could call a call center at a

telecommunications company and request for information on plans which would typically require

comparative information on promotions, costs and benefits of features, bundling options available

with them and so on. Call center representatives can help in evaluating the trade-offs of each

plan. On the other hand, information such as flight schedules, weather reports are easily

automated.

The business landscape for vehicle telematics has been radically transformed from the time

safety and security was the primary need. Increasingly, voice information services and more

importantly entertainment will constitute an increasing share of revenues earned from vehicle

telematics. These applications are media rich and require storage technologies to support them. 38 Improving Call Center Performance through Optimized Site Selection by Dr. John Anton et al, June 2001.

A transition from analog to digital systems is an important reason for the intensified competition in

the vehicle telematics marketplace. The incumbent, Onstar, could virtually monopolize the market

place as long as safety and security was the only viable service that could be offered. Digital

systems work better for richer applications like entertainment. Early signs of the radical

transformation of the industry are the satellite entertainment services from XM Radio

(http://www.xmradio.com) introduced by General Motors for Cadillac DeVilles and Sevilles, in

November 2001. Similar services are also available from Sirius Satellite Radio

(http://www.siriusradio.com/)

New companies such as Wingcast and Mobile Aria, besides new independent service providers

such as Automobile Association of America, are poised to introduce a wide range of new

services. Emerging players are using dual mode devices since the coverage of digital networks

is still less than half of analog networks; AMPS (advanced mobile phone service) is the analog

system which has 90% coverage in the USA while digital systems have 40% coverage.

While security and safety services were ostensibly the most important services, the actual call

pattern showed that many of the queries were for location based services. Figures released by

ATX Technologies

(http://www.atxtechnologies.com/responseops/newsletter_sq00.asp#handling) show that

only 2% of calls received are emergency calls that necessarily require human intervention. The

large majority of the calls request navigation assistance, roadside assistance and non-emergency

911 calls, usually by drivers who have lost their way and want to get back on track. Much of this

traffic can be automated by speech recognition technologies.

Vehicle telematics, today, has a small base of users that has grown slowly because the pricing is

not attractive. Of a total of 1.7 million users today, 1.3 million subscribe to Onstar services and

the remaining to ATX Technologies. Current market research indicates that consumers are

unwilling to pay any more than a hundred dollars for telematics services39. Onstar currently

charges $199 for its basic plan of safety and security services and $399 for the premium

39 Quoted from “The Current Market for Telematics: Great Products searching for demand” by M Scott Ulnick and William Haupricht of Ducker Worldwide Inc

package, which includes information services. Some of the cost reduction required to lower prices

will be achieved by speech recognition technologies.

A more serious problem with analog technologies, in the perception of emerging players, has

been the product mix that was not in line with market demand. Security services are highly valued

but are infrequently utilized by customers. Information services such as weather, stock, flight and

sport information have both low value and low frequency of usage. Customers look for car

entertainment above all and value hands free voice telephony, instant messaging, voice-enabled

e-mail and the ability to track their buddies and be able to chat with them. Vertical business

applications come, business finders, real time traffic updates and network updated calendar rank

as the second most important set of services required by customers40.

Two major developments are about to change the product mix that will be offered in the future.

Firstly, the launch of Blue tooth enabled technologies that help to synchronize between the car

system and cellular phones. The phone can be docked inside the car and all information is

received hands free by voice messages relayed by the car speaker41.

The greater convenience of voice-enabled services will be a boon to the growth of vertical

business applications that mobile professionals such as real estate brokers and salespeople

require.

Secondly, emerging players in the telematics industry are taking advantage of declining costs of

802.11 A&B wireless LANs to inter-link home computing and telematics. Customers can take

advantage of its high bandwidth of 802.11 (50MB/sec for 802.11 A over a 100 meter distance and

11 MB/sec for B over 200 meters. Data or music and other entertainment files can be

downloaded from the home computer to the car for use in transit.

ATX Technologies, one of the incumbents, on the other hand, is taking a more conservative view

of the market. It does see a market for streaming media and Unified Messaging including e-mail,

voice mail and instant messaging imaging as well as voice-enabled information services. Its focus

remains services specific to vehicles such as vehicle customer relationship management for

40 Rankings quoted from “Perspectives on Telematics”, by Sachal Gidwani, November 7th 2001, Delphi Automotive 41 http://www.daimlerchrysler.de/index_e.htm

OEMs. In any case, even such a minimalist strategy will mean and increase in demand for

storage for media rich content.

In sum, the emerging vehicle telematics market will not only increase in size, it will also raise the

demand for storage services for the supply of new services.

4.3 Business Intelligence

We will estimate the demand that business intelligence databases will create for storage on the

basis of three key assumptions. One, the growth in the demand for business intelligence

databases is driven by overall rates of growth in IT expenditures; we will assume the trend growth

rate in IT expenditures ignoring the abnormal growth in IT expenditure that took place in 1999 and

2000 driven by the euphoria following the launch of the web browser in 1995 as well as the

availability of a surfeit of cheap financing from vendors, junk bond markets, venture capital and

IPOs.

According to a review of IT expenditures over forty years completed by Morgan Stanley Dean

Witter42, the average rate of growth of IT expenditures in the US economy has been 13% percent

per annum. In 1999, it rose to 18% growth over 1998 and in 2000 it rose by another 23% over the

previous year. The excesses are palpable from the fact that 70% of venture capital financing and

56% of the IPOs in twenty-one years took place in these two years. We will assume that the trend

rate of growth will be restored in 2002 and 2003. In 2001, the estimated growth rate for IT

spending is the current consensus rate of 7%.

Secondly, expenditures in CRM/Business intelligence will translate into demand for storage only

when companies plan to analyze data for decision support. The latest industry survey undertaken

by the Data Warehousing Institute (DWI) 43confirms that two-thirds of the companies deploying

analytical databases prefer a centralized approach required for hosting data warehouses on

storage systems.

When CRM databases are used for strategic purposes, their scope expands to the entire

enterprise. Also, the size of the databases grows as information from secondary sources of

42 Technology and the Economy: An attempt at Pattern Recognition, April 2001 43 (http://www.dw-institute.com/industrystudy2000/Chapter3/chapter3.html)

information is also gathered. Companies are clearly making a transition from the early adopter

stage of CRM to more advanced functions of business intelligence. The DWI survey finds that

59% of the companies planned for an enterprise-wide CRM system.

Unsurprisingly, the size of the databases is expected to increase as companies plan to collect

not only operational data but also contextual data to identify significant patterns. According to the

DWI survey, the large majority of the respondents have CRM databases with less than 100,000

records. Over the next 12 months, 53% of the companies are planning to maintain databases of

sizes ranging between 100,000 and 50 million records. Currently, the most popular pieces of

information are account and sales and purchase information and external information such as

demographic and industry information is also collected extensively. Over the next 12 months,

interest will shift to on on-line sales, web registration data, responses to sales campaigns and

multi-media data.

Our third assumption is that legacy CRM databases will, created by early adopters, will migrate to

business intelligence. The early adopters, according to the DWI survey, constitute 25% of the

population and all respondents except 9% will invest in CRM.

A reasonable assumption for our estimate for our forecasts is that about half of all enterprises in

USA will complete the process of adopting CRM technologies required for analytical purposes.

Since two thirds of these prefer a centralized approach, about a third will of all enterprises take to

business intelligence over the next two to three years. We will assume that the early adopters will

have the largest databases of 50 million records while the rest of the 75% will have an average of

1 million records.

4.4 Prospects of Location Based Services

Location based services have been seen as synonymous with consumer applications such as

information on restaurants, driving directions, traffic data and so on. Based on our interviews,

most carriers are unwilling, in the near future, to step beyond consumer applications although the

software industry has the capability to deploy richer enterprise applications. However, Nextel has

had a great deal of success in expanding the market for business applications including location

based services.

Lately, a bevy of established players in the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) into wireless

LBS has brought financial strength and a wealth of geographical information that can potentially

be used to offer richer enterprise applications. Some of the prominent names are Autodesk

(www.autodesk.com), which brings the advantage of its large pool of spatial data useful to the

engineering industry. ESRI (http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0401/bunchls.html) funnels a wide

variety of geographical information from its geography network that can be useful for enterprise

applications. Intergraph has set up a subsidiary Intelliwhere (www.intelliwhere.com) for wireless

location based applications. MapInfo (www.mapinfo.com) has long provided asset management

solutions to the telecommunications industry and customer relationship management.

All these companies accord a higher priority to enterprise applications; their current pre-

occupation with consumer applications reflects the preferences of carriers. Autodesk has

developed location based services for the engineering industry and its horizontal applications are

consumer applications offered to carriers. MapInfo offers vertical applications for CRM and asset

management applications while its horizontal applications are offered to the consumer market.

Space Machine is focused on applications for field forces but it has applications that can provide

location based information on restaurant menus.

The adoption of these consumer applications has been stymied by the absence of technology of

identifying a customer’s location. However, increasing availability of miniature GPS devices and

implementation of the second phase of E 911 (see table on the pace of growth of cell-id

technology) will ease this constraint Even in an optimistic scenario of rapid adoption following the

acceptance of E-911 or Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS), the size of the consumer

location based services market is smaller than the short text messaging services market44. From

44 The data on the market for location based services is reviewed in The Economist, October 13th-19th 2001

a storage perspective, the volumes of information will be small since most consumers will require

map-based information without imagery.

Enterprise location based services, on the other hand, are potentially large because they add

value to existing corporate databases such as CRM, asset management databases used by field

forces and so on. Location based services are logical extensions to wireless functions lately

added to widely adopted CRM software such as that available from Siebel.

Furthermore, enterprise databases have a need for large volumes of data such as imagery

required in the real estate industry (e.g. www.realtor.com) or the insurance industry. While vector

data is adequate for most consumer applications, the enterprise market requires raster data for

mobile professionals to visualize data for effective maintenance such as repairs of utility assets.

Satellite imaging, for example, is used in the utilities and the telecommunications industry

(http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/releases/2000/apps-util.htm)

In addition, enterprise users will need to access data more frequently during the course of a day

instead of sporadic use of databases by consumers. Consequently, location identification

technologies like Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS) will play a catalytic role since they do

not require manual entry of zip code information, as is the current practice for consumer

applications.

4.5 Medical Applications

Public policy has an overriding influence on the business environment of the health industry and

this is also true for deployment of information technology. The Health Insurance Portability &

Accountability Act of 1996 (August 21) (HIPAA)45 will have an overarching influence on the

management of health records including their format, storage and utilization. The long debate on

issues of privacy, inextricable from standards of identification of individuals and institutions, in the

45 Background can be found at (http://www.hipaadvisory.com/regs/HIPAAprimer1.htm).

health industry has been settled and has paved the way for accelerated deployment of

information technology including storage technologies.

The section 1173 (b) of HIPAA mandates unique identifiers for individuals, employers, health plan

and health care provider46. Aggregation of information hinges on the ability to identify the patient,

the provider and the payer. The medical history of a patient can be retrieved even if he or she

changes location, health plans or medical groups. All related information including medical

images, patient data, vital statistics and historical information relating to each patient can be

collated. The communication of data is easier since all this information will be available from a

single point by using the metadata for the participants.

The assimilation of information for the purposes of interpretation of the data will be possible

because codes will be used for each procedure, disease type, the symptoms, related health

problems and drugs prescribed. This coding can become the basis of the metadata that will be

useful to find disease patterns and to pinpoint errors in diagnosis, fraud control, etc47.

For a long time, the vocabulary for data definitions in the health industry has been contentious

and varied a great deal between institutions. For example, individual institutions could well have

different scales to measure pain. The section 1173 (c) mandates standard data definitions which

can be used across institutions. The aggregation of data from numerous institutions creates the

conditions for aggregation of data on a very large scale and its use for decision support.

The HIPAA also creates the conditions for automation of information management processes

beyond digital imaging that has been the case so far. Increasingly, health enterprises will see an

advantage in extending automation to clinical information system and will include patient records,

laboratory results and clinical workflows. The utilization of wireless technologies will see a

concurrent increase for collection of vital signs information, dictation of physicians’ notes and

point-of-care data use increases. 46 http://www.hipaadvisory.com/regs/law/1173.htm 47 See http://www.hipaadvisory.com/regs/Regs_in_PDF/finaltrans.pdf for information on data types and identifiers.

Actual implementation of the HIPAA regulations is planned to be completed by 200348. Past

experience suggests that postponement of the schedules is common and is anticipated again49 .

The fact remains that the progress in the larger hospitals, with more than 400 beds, is

unmistakable and extends to identifiers50. Many of the other health enterprises are taking a wait

and see approach and will change when the pace of change in the industry picks up.

The heightened interest in wireless devices and ASPs is another indication that centralized

management of data is well underway. The rate of adoption of wireless devices and ASPs is

expected to be doubled over the next two years51. Similarly, computerized patient records have

already been completed in 13% of health enterprises and are under implementation or planned

for implementation half of the enterprises surveyed52

5 COMPETITIVE ISSUES

5.1 Digital Photography

Ease of use has been the lynchpin of competitive strategies in the photography business. Digital

photography industry, still in its early stage of development, does not have the rudimentary

infrastructure for development of photographs after they have been shot. Digital photography

kiosks will provide the convenience of processing, printing, uploading and distributing

photographs. Companies with the better software and storage infrastructure for the kiosks will be

the winners.

Traditional photography continues to retain the loyalty of the large majority of customers. Picture

quality and ease of use of traditional cameras are strengths that digital cameras will find hard to

match in the near term or even over the longer run. However, digital photography is decidedly the

technology of choice for all the subsequent processes for production of photographs and their

48 http://www.hipaadvisory.com/news/compliancecal.htm49 http://www.himss.org/content/files/hipaa_survey_fall2001_9027.pdf 50 op cit 51 http://www.himss.org/2001Survey/Main.htm 52 http://www.himss.org/2001Survey/Main.htm

preservation and distribution. The companies that marry the advantages of digital photography

with traditional photography will be the winners.

Currently, most needs for storage of photographs is met by removable storage media such as

flash cards, zip disks or CD-ROMs. Internet storage is not yet the preferred medium of storage at

this point of time because of unsatisfactory compression technologies. We can expect companies

to utilize JPEG 2000 and similar technologies to overcome this problem. They will take advantage

of the ability of storage to provide photographic output in a variety of shapes and forms to

increase the size of its client base.

Finally, Meta data is integral to the success of any player in the digital photography industry. The

companies that are able to propose universally acceptable data definitions of photographic

information will be the winners in the future.

5.1.1 Applied Science Fiction’s (ASF™)

Applied Science Fiction’s (ASF™) (www.asf.com) is our choice of a company that has launched a

disruptive technology that will reshape the digital photography industry and accelerate the

currently slow rates of adoption in the digital photography industry. The hallmark of its strategy is

that it brings it brings the ease of use of traditional photography to digital photography and the

ease of storage and editing of digital photography to traditional photography.

ASF™’s innovations take the beaten path of adding ease of use to photo processing of traditional

photographs. Yet it brings to silver halide films unforeseen benefits of digital photography—

storage on a disk, real-time editing, and ability to view images on any device as well as

transmission of images over networks all in minutes.

Users of the 35 mm camera can have the best of the analog and the digital world because ASF’s

Digital PIC™ develops a standard film and creates an Extended Range Digital Negative™

(XRDN™) on a CD instead of a silver-halide film (film negatives). Hazardous chemicals are not

used for processing, as is the case with analog film processing. The XRDN has besides all the

attributes of a digitally shot photograph, such as ease of duplication, printing, editing and storage,

a core file for each image that provides an open pathway to future file formats. Unlike existing

photo CDs, the XRDN is intended to provide the benefits of the film negative plus the advantages

of the digital environment. ASF™ will manufacture the Digital PIC capture engine and sell it to

OEM integrators.

ASF’ corporate strategy is based on the premise that the inherent technical limitations of digital

cameras have inhibited their diffusion since 1981 when they were first launched by Sony and

Canon. Typically, a digital camera converts light into electrons by either a CCD (Charge Coupled

Device), for higher quality and more expensive images, or CMOS (Complimentary Metal-Oxide

Semi-conductor) for lower quality and inexpensive images. An analog to digital converter then

transforms the electrical signals into digital information. These conversions add to the “boot to

shoot” time or the interval between consecutive shots. Most professional or experienced amateur

photographers are unwilling to tolerate these delays since they lose their most important

opportunities.

The other limitation of digital cameras is their need for voluminous storage, which grows as the

resolution improves. For a resolution of an equivalent of 18 Megapixels (2000 x 3000 x 3

channels) that an XRDN provides for a film roll of 24 shots, storage needs of a digital camera are

18 MB, which increases to 30 MB when the pictures are scanned (12 bit depth). ASF’s Digital

PIC technology allows users to keep their files in three different sizes—300K for JPEG

compressed files, 2 ½ MB as lossy compressed files and 121/2 MB as lossless uncompressed

files which can be adapted to future technologies as they emerge.

ASF’s innovations set out to cater to the latent demand for digital imaging from users of traditional

cameras. The market for analog cameras is already very large and accounts for all but 3 to 8

percent (estimates vary) of all cameras or 1.04 billion units excluding 300 million single use

cameras and generate 80 billion images a year. Users of a 35 mm camera value its ease of

clicking and want the advantages of sharing, file management and preservation of digital

photography.

The thrust of its operational strategy is the adaptability of the Digital PIC process. Digital PIC can

be configured to fit within traditional and non-traditional photofinishing markets. A Digital PIC

kiosk rendition will be launched at Christmas time in 2001 and will grow in numbers in 2002. The

concept of a kiosk is much like the ubiquitous drop-off centers available at pharmacy stores for

traditional photography.

The kiosks will bring three main benefits, storage on a removable CD, file management and

printing, that will enhance the usability of digital photography. Currently, most users download

their digital pictures from a digital camera, by a tedious process, to a personal computer for

storage. When stored on PCs, users run a high risk of losing their photographs. Alternatively,

customers store their photographs on flash cards, which have a limited capacity.

ASF’s technologies will provide the photographs on CDs, which can be viewed on not only a PC

but also on a DVD player or a game machine. Users can upload only to their PC, but they can

only show the pictures in VideoCD format on a DVD player and game console. Customers will

have the option to receive a spare copy as a back up. Kiosks will also offer the option of

uploading photographs to an on-line storage device.

File management or the metadata, which identifies the photographs or their context, is another

benefit that will be available with ASF’s technologies. Users can store their pictures in specific

folders each of them describing a context. Current technologies number the photographs and

replace previously saved pictures stored on a device.

The CDs will also not be identified using an adhesive label, as this could lead to future media

degradation that happens when the paper interacts with the glue. Instead, the title of a CD and

the thumbnails of the images on the CD are printed onto the CD without using a damaging print

technology.

Kiosks will provide printing facilities to customers. Unlike pictures printed on home printers, kiosks

will provide prints that last much longer and have a higher quality.

In summary, the Digital PIC kiosk model will create a bridge to digital while providing consumers

with the convenience, control, flexibility and choice that are demanded in today’s fast-paced

digital environment.

5.1.2 Pixel Magic Imaging (www.pmimaging.com)

Pixel Magic Imaging plays a complimentary role to that of Applied Science Fiction in facilitating

ease of use in digital photography industry. It franchises kiosks, which also buy its photo

processing equipment, and provides the storage infrastructure customized for image

management needs. The retail stores, however, are not under any obligation to use Pixel’s brand

name. It also provides local wireless to users while they are shopping in a retail store besides

web access.

5.2 Unified Messaging, Voice Information and Telematics

Two factors, bundling and personalization as well as pricing, will be decisive in the competitive

dynamics of this segment of the wireless industry and storage technologies will help companies in

achieving both these goals. The bundling of services will help in product differentiation and price

reduction as well as in raising their joint utility. Unified messaging alone may not be very useful to

mobile professionals but its value is more when it is voice enabled and is available in combination

with information services.

Service providers will have a choice of bundles of services that they offer to their customers. This

could range from entertainment only or safety and security services only to a combination of

information, messaging, security services and entertainment. The precise mix that customers

request will depend on their needs and their comfort level with devices. The winners will be the

service providers who are able to provide the broad mix of services and to tailor them for

individual customers. Storage technologies will help to centralize the content at one point and to

manage their delivery to a variety of customers.

The other critical factor in the competitive dynamics would be to reap the economies of scope

from aggregating services. By offering a bundle of services, companies will be able to not only

reduce the cost of marketing but also to leverage storage technologies to reduce the cost of

managing data.

5.2.1 Tornado Development (www.tornadodevelopment.com/)

Tornado Development is our choice of a company that has made innovative use of storage

technologies to push the envelope for wireless applications. Its architecture is designed to not

only offer a variety of bundles of services but also to reduce costs by centralizing information in a

repository.

It develops enhanced services software including e-mail, voice mail, faxing, SMS, unified

messaging and Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS). These services are licensed from

Tornado and deployed on carriers’ networks. The same applications can also be used for voice

portals, which is the business Tornado is currently entering. The cornerstone of Tornado’s

strategy is to develop software that substantially reduces the costs of messaging, unified

messaging and voice portals by lowering the investment on storage.

The carrier hosts Tornado’s product, Tornado Messenger, with the message store on storage

area networks to take advantage of their scalability. StorageApps

(http://www.storageapps.com/), recently acquired by Hewlett Packard, is one of its important

storage partners besides EMC. The messages are stored on SANs while the associated

metadata is kept on network-attached storage.

The centerpiece of Tornado’s strategy, to reduce costs, involves moving beyond IMAP/LDAP type

of solutions. While IMAP/LDAP solutions have a common repository for storing messages,

Tornado’s view on these types of messaging solutions is that the messages retain their

metacontent (the context of the message such as attachments, date, etc.) and their envelope

(routing information, subject, sender and receiver). Thus, there are compartments for e-mail;

voice messages, SMS and messages from one compartment has to be reproduced in the others

before they can be accessed by all means such as phone, web browser or an e-mail client. The

multiplicity of compartments drives up the costs of storage.

Conversely, Tornado’s architecture allows the merger of all the separate compartments within the

message box. Incoming messages are stripped of their metacontent and the envelope or the

format (neutralized i.e. overheads are removed), which are stored separately in an Oracle or any

other database. Each message is routed to a storage sub-system. Without the complexity of the

metacontent and the format, message content can be compressed to a tenth of its initial volume.

Storage space can, therefore, be considerably reduced. Tornado reports a cost reduction of 25%

with its software.

The Lightweight Layer within the Tornado Messenger Message Server plays a pivotal role in

reducing costs of storage. It neutralizes messages (separates from their metacontent), such that

they are all reduced to data and can be stored in a single data repository. Developed as a module

with C++ and Java, the Lightweight layer translates messages from one format to another, in real

time, so that they can be sent and received by any means of access.

The Database Layer of the Tornado Message Server, where the administrative information

resides, identifies and catalogs the stored messages. It also plays the role of routing the

messages to the device where it is finally received. The Database Layer works with the Remote

Access Communication Layer, at the edge of the network, which acts as a gateway between

Tornado’s IP network and the PSTN.

The Lightweight Layer, which incorporates a data link layer for database connectivity, can be

connected to existing e-mail or voice-mail server. Customers of unified messaging services

typically don’t want conversions from one message type to all others. They look to progressively

increase the message types that they want to unify over time. Such clients have the option to

migrate without scraping their existing infrastructure.

Tornado’s marketing strategy reflects its architecture. In a few cases, such as Telekom Malaysia,

it has been able to sell unified communications software that includes voice, fax and text which

can be accessed from any device whether phone, e-mail or web browser.

The requirements of Tornado’s customers range from e-mail only and voice mail only systems, to

full UM and mobile UM offerings (e-mail and SMS). The architecture allows them to choose single

message systems and integrates other message types according to customer needs.

Most of Tornado’s customers reside in East Asian countries and in Europe. In the USA, it has

launched its services with Global Crossing and has entered, or is slated to enter, into system

trials with 3 U.S. wireless carriers.

A common message box will be the foundation on which Tornado will, over the next 6 to 18

months, plans to add voice portal services, and Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) (video,

picture messaging, audio clips) and intelligence to messaging. Users will have the ability to sort

messages on their criteria of priority or reject spam as they define it. The system keeps track of

patterns of messaging and users predisposition to open any type. Based on the profile of the

user, the intelligence function will add automation in acceptance of messages and prompts for

retrieval.

5.2.2 BeVOCAL (http://www.bevocal.com/index.html)

BeVocal is our choice of a company that has found ways to increase the rate of adoption of voice

portal services. Although it uses content from its partners and does not directly use storage

technologies, it has made advances in expanding the market for voice information services.

BeVocal, a voice portal technology company, came into the limelight when it achieved the crucial

breakthrough of acquiring Qwest as a customer. Other voice portal companies, Tellme with AT&T

and more recently HeyAnita with Sprint, followed. BeVocal, however, maintained the lead by

confirming, in October 2001, that it had acquired Bell South, the first wire line carrier and regional

Bell Operating Company to adopt voice portal services. The partnership with Bell South signals

the end of the early adoption stage for voice portal companies and paves the way for reaping the

benefits of economies of scale.

BeVocal does not expect revenue growth from wire line carriers to be as rapid as with the

wireless carriers. On the other hand, Bell South brings the advantage of a larger market, which

will grow with vertical product differentiation.

While wireless carriers cater mainly to the consumer market, Bell South’s market also includes

enterprises and call centers. BeVocal plans to work with system integrators and third-party

certified developers (developers on the BeVocal Café (http://cafe.bevocal.com)) to customize

services for the carriers in a variety of vertical markets in the enterprise space. For the consumer

market, new innovations will include e-centers, the equivalent of a public phone for voice

information services. The demand for voice portal services is expected to grow in call centers

since relocation of such services to South Asia has heightened pressures for automation.

BeVocal also plans to extend its portfolio of products to include, besides voice information and

voice dialing services, new services such as voice messaging. Its voice information services

include location and travel information (driving directions, business finder, weather, traffic and

flight information), information services (stock-quotes, news, sports) and entertainment (movies,

TV dramas, horoscopes and lottery). Increasing competition is expected to lower the margins for

these services. Higher margins are expected from introduction of newer products such as voice

dialing and e-mail communicated by voice.

For the management of fluctuating traffic, BeVocal does not plan to take advantage of the

redundancies typically available when the solutions are hosted on data centers. Instead, it has

developed proprietary software, which helps to balance loads from different types of traffic. To the

extent variations in traffic for each piece of information service is known and moves in contrary

directions, the software is able to change the routing of traffic such that each port is optimally

utilized.

BeVocal’s platform can accommodate both VoiceXML and speech objects and either of them

allow componentization of its applications. Storage management is not a concern as a result of

the layered software architecture. At this point of time, it did not report storage as a significant

barrier to performance.

5.3 CRM/Business Intelligence

Data warehouses are used for strategic as well as tactical decision-making. A typical strategic

use of a data warehouse is the analysis of customer churn or the analysis of fraud, which does

not involve extensive participation in an enterprise. Furthermore, predictive models for such

applications are tailored for specific enterprises. The picture changes with tactical decision

support such as pricing of rooms in tourist resorts during the season. Information is fed,

processed and communicated in real time for such applications. Data flows are unpredictable and

the variations have to be managed by an appropriate design of storage systems. Wireless

technologies are critical for receiving information and to communicate decisions about pricing.

Data warehouses help in collation of information, reducing time lags in processing of data and its

communication. It is harder to cross-reference information when it resides in isolated data marts.

Similarly, its hard to communicate information to a group when each person is required to access

different data marts. Companies such as Business Objects (www.businessobjects), Information

Builders (www.informationbuilders.com) and especially Teradata (www.teradata.com) and

(www.sas.com) have transformed the competitive landscape of the Customer Relationship

Management (CRM) marketplace by cutting short the time lags in decision-making.

In a data warehouse environment, information is utilized to speed up decision-making processes.

This is despite the fact that larger volumes of data need to be gathered from a growing number of

touchpoints and centralized in single repository (they can be distributed in a web environment). A

richer taxonomy of data needs to be assimilated and presented graphically as key indicators that

users of the information can act upon in real time. Wireless technologies play a complementary

role since they can be used to receive prompts for decision-making.

Some of the key factors influencing the competitive strengths of a CRM solutions company are

• The need to assimilate information from diverse sources requires the ability to convert data

from diverse systems. A company may, for example, receive information from its suppliers,

retail stores, handheld devices, web site and e-mail. Besides operational data, information

about market developments, such as leading indicators, is received from information

suppliers such as Dun and Bradsheet. In order to aggregate information, CRM companies

have to be able to develop interfaces that allow the flow of information from all such sources

to a central repository.

• Traditional CRM systems utilize Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems for data

recording and data processing. OLTP, which uses a relational database, is efficient for

recording information since data elements for each entity (such as product, orders, etc.) is

recorded in a separate table (consequently information such as numerical identification does

not have to be reentered). OLTP is useful for simple queries such as comparison of inventory

and sales. On the other hand, SQL queries become increasingly complex, as queries require

cross-reference to several different entities and time for retrieving data increases. Business

intelligence software is designed for parallel processing of data and parses data concurrently

across several entities. Typically, the tools used for analysis are called Online Analytical

Processing (OLAP) which have the ability to respond to more complex queries53

• Large data warehouses are valuable to an enterprise when the “woods in the trees”

messages from masses of data can be reduced to key indicators and visually illustrated. This

is particularly necessary when information has to be communicated to the broad majority of

53 A description of OLAP can be found at www.olapcouncil.org/research/whtpaply.htm

employees who have very little time to absorb information. In the past, data analysis was

done by drawing data from relational databases that required familiarity with SQL queries.

Emerging data processing technologies enable presentation of data in the spreadsheet

format that most professionals understand54.

• Collection of information at source and communication of information by mobile devices

undergoes change with the processing of large volumes of information. Currently,

synchronization is the most popular means to update information available in a database.

Typically, information is stored or retrieved manually by a handheld device or a laptop onto a

personal computer or a server after an agreed interval of time. Synchronization is preferred

for its low costs. Business Intelligence data is best communicated automatically as alerts or

when data is pushed to the beneficiary of the information. Alerts are triggered by events such

as shortfalls in inventory, which is communicated to salespeople who need to act on the

information.

• Storage technologies are critical for the management of downtime and retrieval time on data

warehouses. By replicating the data on several storage devices, especially when the number

of users rises, time lags in retrieval can be lowered. Similarly, downtime can be lowered with

redundancy that is possible with replication of data.

54 For a demonstration of one such product from ProClarity, see

5.3.1 Teradata (www.teradata.com)

Teradata is a leader in business intelligence data warehouses that shorten the lead times for

collection, processing and dissemination of information for multi-terabyte size databases. Its

business intelligence software goes beyond the use of data warehouses for the analysis of data

for strategic purposes. Instead, its Active Warehouse can be deployed for near real time decision

making by large number of users within an enterprise as well as partners within the extended

enterprise. It has designed its proprietary data warehouse supported by its unique file system to

manage storage required for I/O that is entirely unpredictable.

In terms of sheer size of the data warehouse, a typical application of a Teradata warehouse is the

case of 3M, a multi-national company which has operations in 200 countries, manufactures

500,000 products, employs 75,000 people and has a turnover of $ 15 billion. Before the

implementation of the data warehouse, data collection and reporting was confined to each

department and customers and partners were, for all practical purposes, dealing with 50 different

companies. A global, enterprise wide data warehouse integrated all these disparate databases

into a single warehouse which can be searched, queried, sorted by a web browser. In addition,

the data warehouse integrates information from D&B Worldbase which includes data from 50

million businesses and has worldwide customer information and market channel information.

Altogether, 30,000 users access the data warehouse each day with 15 million hits.

The nature of the decision support that Active Data warehouse can provide is illustrated by the

case of choices that truck owners have to make. Truck routes are differentiated by those that

have their destination as the hubs and others carrying freight from hubs to points where packages

are received. A truck driver has to decide between the options of fully loading the vehicle against

the time loss by waiting for additional packages to arrive. These decisions have to be made in

real time. Information processing required for the decisions would be random as it would involve

estimating time of arrival, distances covered by trucks and so on.

For its storage solutions, Teradata made a deliberate choice not to use storage area networks. It

has, instead, decided to have directly attached storage in order to guarantee the performance for

query time. In a storage area network, the volume of traffic is entirely unpredictable since the

number of nodes is very large so that conflicting demands are made on the capacity of storage

area networks. Teradata, on the other hand, uses hashing techniques to guarantee a fixed

amount of storage for a given level of processing needs. Storage capacity is not physically

allocated for specific needs but is logically reserved for specific processing requirements.

Hashing algorithms reallocate capacity with the ebb and flow of traffic.

Teradata guarantees performance by parallel processing of information in the data warehouse. In

a traditional database, queries are simple and usually require searching in a small part of the

database; a typical query would require the search for orders received from a specific customer.

For queries that are repetitive or similar, DBAs tune the database so that queries can be

processed efficiently. Since queries for decision-support are not predictable, this is not possible

with data warehouses.

However, the processing capacity of a node is not permanently allocated for a particular task by

tuning it. Instead, Teradata has reserved the task of allocating disk and processing capacity to the

file system which does this logically and without any intervention from the DBA.

Currently, storage service providers determine their service level agreements based on not only

their disk capacity but caching as well. For the decision support that Teradata provides to its

customers, traffic is not predictable enough for caching to be relevant and cannot help to boost

performance.

Storage area networks are useful for load balancing required for high throughput traffic. However,

the throughput for CRM databases is not large but the numbers of I/O can be variable and large

although the volume of data for each of them is not unmanageably large.

The other potential benefit of storage area networks is the possibility of mirroring for convenient

access locally and to wireless devices. Teradata, however, centralizes the data at a single point

and in most cases publishes data to enterprise intranet in most cases. Wireless access to data is

possible but this task is left to middleware developers and to the suppliers of wireless devices.

Teradata has organized its data warehouse into nodes, each equipped with directly attached disk

arrays that are required to manage a data for a section of the table. So, a query may require the

search of a thousand rows across several tables. A typical case could be click stream data of

consumers which would include data on what they purchased when and from where. A query

would involve summary of data of all consumers at any location or time. This would be followed

by sorting to do analysis such as where among all the regions was a particular product more

popular than in other places. Each node is required to process data from a fraction of the rows

and return the results.

5.4 Location Based Services

Companies in the location based services space will gain an edge as they add attribute

information to their stock of spatial information. Most companies in this segment initially began by

providing simple services such as directions information and driving directions. Their current

plans will help them to differentiate themselves by adding services tailored to the customer group

they have acquired. MapInfo, for example, initially offered GIS information for infrastructure

planning services to clients in the telecommunications industry; in the future it will provide

information services for its field forces. Vicinity offered address and driving directions to local

outlets of retail chains and other multi-location companies and plans to grow by introducing

inventory information for the nearest store. Space Machine is adding services that enable field

forces to co-ordinate their activities as a group.

As the size of the databases increases over time especially with the addition of satellite imagery,

aerial photography, etc., the costs of delivery of information will be a critical determinant of

competitive advantage. Storage companies like SANZ (http://www.sanz-

inc.com/PDFs/ArchivalSystemsnocols.pdf), in partnership with ESRI, and Storagetek

(www.storagetek.co), in partnership with Space Imaging

(http://www.geoplace.com/gw/1999/0599/599data.asp) take advantage of HSM (Hierarchical

Storage Management), or a combination of disk and tape and optical disks in the future, to lower

the costs of management of large volumes of data. HSM uses a file system to automate the flow

of data from disks or tapes, from the media or the cache, by an orderly process that minimizes

the costs and latencies in data recovery.

Tape systems, traditionally, were reserved for archiving due to their higher latencies in data

retrieval. The delays include installation of the tape drive by a robotic arm, the search for the

required file and the time required for seeking the specific piece of data in the file. The time

required for the first task is reported to be 40 seconds, the second task takes 53 seconds, and the

seek time for the third task depends on the read rate of the tape55. The reduction of latencies

requires related data to be stored contiguously, organizing data for its parallel retrieval, optimal

use of caching by storing more frequently data on disks. File systems help to optimize the flow of

data.

SANZ has introduced the GEMS file system organizes information on tapes. An added bonus of a

file system is that data can be recovered in parallel streams once it is known where the

information resides. Finally, GEMS is a 64 bit file system which allows users to disperse the data

over several more storage devices and recover them in many more streams than is possible with

a 32 bit file system.

5.4.1 Space Machine (http://www.spacemachine.net/)

Space Machine is our choice of a company that is leveraging storage technologies to push the

envelope for location-based services especially in the enterprise space. Not only does Space

Machine go beyond using the staple Oracle database for storage of information, storage

technologies (SAN or NAS or RAID) are an integral component of the design of its architecture.

Data storage forms an independent tier in its 5-tier architecture that is an aid in achieving the

quality, price and speed of delivery parameters of its applications. The full impact of Space

Machine’s technological edge will be felt when the current bandwidth limitations of wireless

55 The background on Latency issues has been quoted from “Distributed and Hierarchical Storage Systems”, by Craig J Patten, K A Hawick, J F Hercus and A L Brown, January 1999, University of Adelaide, Australia

networks are overcome. Currently, Space Machine’s more advanced location based services are

available as web based applications accessed on the Internet.

Users of wireless Internet frequently experience delays in receiving data and in the presentation

of the information in an intelligible format. The separation of the application tier from the storage

tier in Space Machine’s architecture plays a critical role in lowering the delays in the presentation

of the information requested by the user. Map data and its depiction on a wireless device are a

common denominator in all location based services and this information changes very rarely if at

all. The rendering of map data, each time it is requested, is therefore wasteful of processing

power. By a simple expedient of caching the rendered map data on the server, Space Machine

makes it possible to receive this information almost instantaneously.

The data store plays an altogether different type of function of maintaining dynamic information

that is updated more frequently than map information. The data elements include traffic data,

street vectors, route data, address data and the list expands as the needs grow. When a user

requests, for example, information on landmarks in a neighborhood, the rendered map is

retrieved from the cache whilst the corresponding landmarks data is received from the data store.

Two major efficiencies are realized from relegating data storage to a storage area network or a

similar device. A server combining the caching, the application management and the storage

functions necessarily involves a high-powered processor, which is inevitably expensive. By

contrast, data storage is achieved with equal efficiency but at a much lower cost by cheaper

storage device.

Time delays in receiving information on a wireless device are accentuated when users execute

more complex queries. In the early days of location-based services, users could make-do with

routing information. Increasingly, they look for more of related information such as landmarks.

The data store is able to relay several types of information simultaneously much more efficiently

than a server would able to do.

Whilst the data store is a repository of all information, this does not imply that it is available at

only a single centralized location. Instead, copies of the data are mirrored at several locations

much like cell sites in metropolitan areas. The capacity for storing data is scaled as the number of

customers increases. The availability of copies of the data, close to the consumption point, helps

in lowering the time to download information on a wireless device.

Space Machine has made a deliberate choice not to outsource the function of data storage to

content providers. Component based architecture enabled by Java, XML/SOAP has encouraged

many players to specialize in application and business logic while the storage function as well as

content management is farmed out to partners. Space Machine has chosen to manage the

storage function to ensure performance and robustness. In its architecture, the application layer

knows exactly where it can receive its information.

Improved performance is also achieved by reserving the function of updating and of cleaning data

for the normalization layer. This tier in its architecture collates data from a variety of sources

within the enterprise and other content providers. Space Machine has written adapters that

prompt requests for updating information from data sources at stated intervals. The quality of data

is achieved by checking the consistency of the data with their common addresses.

The front-end business logic of the applications offered by Space Machine reflects the distinctive

flavor of its services. Individuals do not have to suffer the tedium of feeding their location

information. Instead, sensors built into their devices are able to identify the location. Servers, at

the back-end, push information to wireless devices. Proximity-based triggers that are written to

user specifications drive the information to an individual’s device. Each user receives information

that is relevant to his or her location.

The user specifications are stored on the data store tier. When wireless devices are lost, the user

specifications are easily restored. In Space Machine’s experience, the ability to preserve user

specifications is an important consideration for carriers because it helps to retain customer loyalty

This specific design is suited for users whose location affects decision-making. In the enterprise

space, field forces have a use for Space Machine’s applications but not sales staff predisposed to

CRM applications. The whereabouts of members of a field force affects the allocation of tasks,

time allocation and information about the jobs that they have to complete.

In general, Space Machine has learnt that adoption rates for enterprise applications are faster

when they are tailored for specific work-groups instead of for the entire firm. Once acquired, the

churn rate in the enterprise space is much lower than the consumer space.

In the consumer segment, the same technology (location aware) can be used to keep in touch

with the members of the family, friends and pets. Thus, parents can be alerted when their young

children go beyond neighborhood boundaries. Similarly, users would know when their friends are

in the vicinity. Finally, owners of pets can monitor them.

Space Machine does not feel it’s hamstrung by the inaccuracies in the information received from

position identification technologies currently available. GPS data is error prone because of the

delays in receiving information. This can be corrected by software that adjusts for the predicted

errors in the information. The deficiencies in the information on cell-id is corrected by consistency

checks of inter-related information such as the number of blocks separating two locations helps to

correct for any errors in distance information received from cell-id data.

At this point of time, Space Machine’s data needs are in the terabyte range but not all of it is used

by wireless applications. A great deal of the space is required for aerial and satellite imaging that

is delivered over the Internet and are required by a single user. Space Machine has the ability to

offer raster data but is constrained by bandwidth availability.

In the near term future, data storage needs will grow as both the enterprise and consumer market

are offered more detailed information with related routing data. For example, customers will be

able to identify not only restaurants in the vicinity but also the menus offered. Enterprise

customers will be able to track their assets in their locations.

The applications developed for the web enables Space Machine to support a data store as well

as to prepare for richer applications that can be offered, in the future, for wireless devices. As

bandwidth increases, web based applications will also be available to wireless customers.

5.5 Medical Applications

Health enterprises had invested in IT for only peripheral activities such as imaging on the

one hand and administrative processes on the other. Clinical work flows, the heart of the

health system, was largely untouched.

Storage companies that are able to integrate clinical work flows will gain competitive

advantage. Automation of clinical work flows and associated decision support advantages

would provide an edge to the health enterprise and to the storage companies that are able

to best able to provide these solutions.

The challenge of automation of clinical work flows is their diversity and the overriding role

that human intervention plays in them. Consequently, the vocabulary and the associated

data definitions are contentious and diverge between enterprises. The winning companies

will be those who are able to offer acceptable data definitions and lay the basis of

automation of clinical work flows.

5.5.1 General Electric Medical Information Systems

http://www.gemedicalsystems.com/it_solutions/index.html)

GE Medical Information Systems (GEMS) is our choice of a company that is leveraging storage

technologies to launch disruptive applications in the health industry, which includes wireless

applications for data capture. Unlike its peers in the industry, GEMS is extending its applications

beyond medical imagery into clinical information systems that have been largely resistant to

automation. GEMs bid to integrate medical imagery with clinical information systems open the

way for a variety of decision-support applications in the health industry. The distinctive flavor of

the design of its information systems is that they revolve around the needs of clinical

professionals rather than administrative or transactional workflows in the health industry.

GEMS has reached an inflection point in its growth where it is able to integrate multiple data

types like medical images from radiology, wave forms from cardiology, clinical data and vital signs

data to be able to create the infrastructure for centralized management of information received

from several sources within a hospital. The information will be aggregated such that the paper

shuffle between departments within a hospital or a medical group will be minimized as well as

between individual units of a hospital complex or medical group.

The turn in its business strategy is reflected in the spin-off of the information systems business

from GE Medical Systems, several acquisitions, and its recently announced partnership with

Qwest, which will manage its storage and related software at its data centers.

GEMS partnership with Qwest marks a new era in its corporate strategy. At its data center in

Chicago, Qwest will host the storage sub-systems supplied to it by EMC. The hosted application

services will connect to hospitals, within a group and across regions, by fiber optic networks

including on the last mile. The speed of operations and the reliability of the network will be critical

to persuading an increasing number of customers to subscribe to the hosted services.

GEMS existing customers use an intranet and an archive is located off-site on a data center. In

the initial stages, radiology was the focus of digitization of images and storage as the volumes ran

into ten to fifteen terabytes of data. The images, together with the notes from the radiologist (the

Radiological Information System (RIS)) are archived off-site in a data center. The Picture and

Communications System (PACS), for retrieval of images, resides on premises due to insufficient

bandwidth.

In the near tem future, both PACS and the archive of will move off-site. As a result, it will be

possible to have a single system for archiving of pictures as well as for communication to multiple

departments. Thereafter, data from the cardiology department will also be centralized at the same

data center. In the more distant future, patient data and other images will be made available at a

single data center. The aggregation of multiple functions will pave the way for launch of several

applications.

Hitherto, GEMS customers were small and medium sized hospitals who were constrained by

space and resources and recourse to hosted services is a means to keep pace with technological

developments. Large research hospitals had the resources to invest in in-house IT and were

unwilling to risk any loss or disclosure of information by outsourcing. The speed, reliability and

size of operations substantially improve the benefits/cost ratio enough to persuade the larger

hospitals to consider outsourcing. GE has also developed advanced security software to raise the

confidence level of its customers.

The process of outsourcing of applications has begun with clients who subscribe to its online

services. In the year 2002, an accelerated pace of implementation will happen since 50

customers have entered into contracts and altogether an additional 100-150 customers are

expected to subscribe to its services. As services are outsourced, the current rate of growth of IT

related revenue, at 10-15%, can be sustained if not exceeded.

Workflows involving patient information are harder to automate as health data is viewed in a

context and from the lens of a particular discipline. IT professionals have also grapple with

idiosyncratic trade practices of physicians, and the professional codes of doctors and nurses. In

the past, projects of this nature were sponsored by the National Institute of Health and

spearheaded by Chief Medical Officers who were oblivious to the needs of the practicing

professionals. Consequently, the success rate over a thirty-year period has been low.

GEMS strategy will chart a new course and will be based on the premise that the priorities of

clinicians should be coordinates of the systems that automate the workflows in a health system.

This would imply that workflows would be sub-divided in a way that templates of information

would be customized for each type of professional. The other important assumption of its strategy

is that the health enterprise is fragmented at several levels and the value of automation is not

equally compelling at each stage. That the adoption rates will be the highest if the most

dysfunctional work processes are automated first.

The first stage in treatment of patients, the review of their data, is a common denominator in all

health workflows and the most valuable to doctors and nurses. They all need background

information on a patient to prepare for diagnosis and prescription or undertake any surgical task.

A clinical repository, with records of longitudinal patient information, medical history, laboratory

results and encounters with physicians, will form a central repository accessible to any doctor or

nurse. A clinical repository is, therefore, the bedrock of any attempt at automation. The paper

version of a patient chart entails considerable opportunity costs, monetary costs of $40 per event

besides time lags and incomplete data.

The complexity of automation is the greatest at the stage of patient care or clinical encounter

since workflows are specialized and heterogeneous with differing priorities for patient safety,

quality of care, productivity and operating efficiency. Its here that doctors make a judgment call in

individual cases or assessments varies depending on the wealth of information available and how

promptly it’s delivered.

The nature of workflows is dissimilar in an Emergency Room, an Operating Room, the Intensive

Care Unit, Labor and Delivery, the wards and the outpatient clinics. In the operating unit, time

delays are extremely costly since they utilize capital-intensive equipment; the estimated

opportunity cost is estimated at 19 cents a minute for each second that lapses. The delays occur

because patient consent and signatures are necessary, Anesthesiologist’s report is held up, etc.,

which keeps doctors waiting. By contrast, operating efficiency is not as much of a concern as

quality of care in the Emergency Room; doctors and nurses need the white board with information

on patient’s conditions and needs, any work conducted prior to entry into the emergency room

such as laboratory results and reports.

GEMS strategy for automation of specialized domains of medical care is to develop a care plan

for each of them and the corresponding workflow schema for each of them. The functions of

doctors and nurses are delineated and the information needs to reduce their inefficiencies are

identified. GEMS will create templates for each stage of patient care and a clinical event manager

will prompt the users when a task is required to be completed.

GEMS expects that a great deal of the resistance to clinical information systems will ease when it

gathers data about patients and aggregates it in a data warehouse for decision support. A

growing wealth of readily available knowledge takes away the strain of remembering

pharmacological and other information and the errors that occur when doctors forget them.

Consequently, decision support information systems are readily accepted.

The patterns of disease change over time as well as the state-of-art of diagnosis and cure.

Today, for example, anthrax has emerged as a completely unforeseen health risk. In not too

distant a future, biotechnology will spawn a new generation of medical practices. GEMS have

created templates that can be customized by health professionals by providing a pick list of items

that can be added to the template. Furthermore, the pick list can be changed by consensus.

The third and final stage of automation is the processing phase or tasks such as order entry,

charge capture and post-care consultation. At this stage, errors are common because

pharmacists often don’t understand the physician’s handwriting, drug interactions are not taken

into account or susceptibility to allergies is not known. At this stage, acceptance of automation is

greater because the value proposition is manifest.

6 EXPERIENCES OF KEY PLAYERS:

6.1 Storability (www.storability)

Storability is a storage service provider, which offers storage management services with a slant

towards service quality. It builds on software available from Veritas, for centralized management

of storage area networks, to automate processes in order to provision, monitor and report on

performance expected under service level agreements. The software that it adds for ensuring

service quality provides it the edge in the marketplace. Storability’s market is very largely the

security conscious enterprise market, which expects services to be offered behind the firewall.

Over the last six months, it has entered the telecommunications space where the large TELCOs

have garnered business from enterprise customers.

In the enterprise segment of the marketplace, Storability has witnessed a trend towards

increasing consolidation of storage assets within an enterprise. Increasingly, companies are

looking to integrate the islands of storage devices scattered across several departments into

storage area networks. In the past, each department purchased storage devices randomly

ignoring available resources elsewhere in the enterprise.

Besides reducing costs, centralized management of all storage assets creates an independent

business within the enterprise, which offers services to its internal clients. The internal clients

expect services to be customized for their needs. Storability’s services are useful to meet the

contractual agreements between internal clients in the company.

In the telecommunications space, Storability made its entry by partnering with CTC

Communications, one of the few CLECs that have survived the current downturn. In addition,

Storability is awaiting the conclusions with over six other telecommunications companies

including Qwest, which has been most successful in obtaining very large deals of over 100 TB.

The clients in the telecommunications companies are looking to offer especially content

management services and e-business services to their customers. Customers are more willing to

trust well-established TELCOs to outsource storage services. Storability’s services help the

TELCOs to meet the technological requirements of service level agreements.

The demand for content management services has transformed the competitive dynamics in

Storability’s marketplace. Companies need a diversity of services, at varying levels of quality and

price, for rich media management, live video, medical imaging, besides storage of e-mail required

to observe FCC’s regulatory requirements.

Storage management services have to be tailored to meet the requirements of content sensitive

applications so that it is not enough to have generic databases. For example, rich media makes

greater demands for scalability and is harder to manage so it costs more. Other storage services

include content filtering.

Each of these verticals attracts start-ups who specialize in one or the other niche markets.

Storability, in this situation, sees an advantage in licensing its software as a platform, which

others can use to offer customized services. Additional revenues can be earned from the

certification of licensees who have to meet acceptable levels of quality before they can get to use

the platform. Curiously, Storability has received requests from customers to certify their own

internal clients be certified before they use the platform.

6.2 IBM/Tivoli

IBM, together with its partners, offers the entire gamut of services in the value chain of storage-

enabled applications. The services include storage sub-systems, software for storage space

management (volume and virtualization software), content management, storage data flow

management software, web applications servers and web services including wireless

applications. These complimentary capabilities enable IBM to assemble the pieces of the systems

that will transition pilot projects, demonstrating concepts of storage-enabled applications, into

industrial scale operations.

Several pre-requisites have to be met for the implementation of IBM’s strategy for industrial scale

applications. These include streamlined processes; higher speed of retrieval of information,

automation of content management, pre-determined standards for quality of service, and data

flow management. IBM’s Content Manager, Tivoli Storage Manager and storage products like

Enterprise Storage Server are the tools intended to achieve these objectives.

Beyond workgroups, the challenge of content management is to distribute slivers of data from

centralized repositories to points of consumption. Also, the data has to be also transformed to

adapt to the format required by the client. Caching has relied on statistical probabilities to store

data locally largely for desktop web browser clients. Statistical probabilities are harder to estimate

for nomadic wireless clients. Consequently, content delivery networks would have to replicate

much more data to meet consumer need unless alternative intelligent software management

solutions are able to distribute data in real time. Content management continues to evolve within

the industry and IBM has acquired Open Markets (www.openmarkets.com) and Ascential

Software (www.ascentialsoftware.com), even though it has its own Content Manager, to

strengthen its capabilities.

The IBM Content Manager was initially deployed for still photography applications such as the

Vatican Library, The Hermitage and the Andrew Wyeth collection. It was then upgraded to

manage video collections. Customers have been wary about adopting video content management

tools, especially the more complex applications, since they don’t yet have experience with the

system integration requirements.

Tivoli’s software products, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), Tivoli Storage Network Manager

(TSNM) and Tivoli SANergy, are meant to streamline the flow of data from data storehouses to

applications in an environment of heterogeneous operating systems and applications. TSM, the

flagship product, is a suite of modules focused on back-up and recovery. TSNM provides SAN

management functions including automatic discovery, topology mapping, and policy-based

capacity-on-demand. SANergy provides a logical view of resources on the storage area network

and manages data sharing across nine different operating platforms.

Tivoli is adding new functions to its products to make them capable for industrial scale operations.

The latest version of TSM incorporates LAN-free back-up, tape sharing, and enhanced mobile

computing backup capability. The full utility of Tivoli’s software will not be realized until there is

greater file mobility between storage devices and servers and vice versa. For example, a program

operating on a Windows NT platform cannot access a file on a UNIX server; it has to be available

on a file server or has to be redirected from the latter to the former. Full deployment of Tivoli’s

products awaits the APIs that will facilitate inter-operability.

One of IBM’s storage offerings, the Enterprise Storage Servers, ( code named Shark), is

designed to meet the demanding response time requirements of applications, such as rich media,

by combining advanced disk drives, cache, advanced algorithms. The mechanical properties of

disks limit their ability to meet response time requirements for applications like rich media. Shark

increases response time by using intelligent, adaptive algorithms to change the caching logic to

adjust to changes in I/O access characteristics in real time, and increases disk system throughput

by accessing multiple disk drives in parallel56.

Having acquired the technical ability to work in an open SAN environment, IBM is pushing the

industry to adopt standards for inter-operability. Its SAN exploitation software works on a variety

of platforms including zSeries, mid-range iSeries and UNIX/NT. IBM’s SAN exploitation

applications (TSM, Tivoli SANergy and TSNM) can work with AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Compaq’s

Tru64, Windows NT and 2000, Novell and Linux and the mainframe works with ESCON.It has

taken the initiative to promote open standards for SANs in forums such as SNIA, FCIA, IETF,

ANSI T11, DMTF and ISO among others.

Meanwhile, it has chosen to pursue the commercialization of rich media applications, require

management of blocks of data and do not need to use heterogeneous operating systems.

Currently, IBM is limited to using the AS 390, its own operating system, for the deployment of

SAN enabled applications

For the high end of rich media applications for large broadcasting companies, IBM offers a file

system called GPFS (General Parallel File System), which works best in conjunction with its 56 The details of the architecture can be found at http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/products/ess/essperf.pdf

supercomputers but can also be used with lower performance servers. The key feature of the

GPFS is its ability to manage numerous video streams running in parallel; blocks of data are

broken into stripes for read and write operations on several disks.

Like other virtualization software, GPFS provides a logical view of the physical disk capacity and

allocates data using a volume manager. Its distinctive character is that it manages parallel

streams of traffic. A cluster of file nodes, each of them having a complete view of disk capacity,

access a corresponding array of disk nodes intermediated by a switch.

GPFS file systems ensure very high levels of performance since they do away with file sharing.

Non-linear editing happens with the entire team sharing the same storage, which can reach

multiple terabytes of data. The speed of operation can reach 100 Gigabytes per node.

GPFS was used in early video-on-demand trials in the mid-nineties but floundered when it could

not be run on modest bandwidth then available. The needs of cable over builders, for their

interactive television programming, and encoding needs of large broadcasters have revived the

prospects for GPFS.

Interest in broadband distribution projects has begun but the pace of progress is constrained by

previous investments in analog systems. Due to these legacy investments, the large majority of

broadcasters is unwilling to switch to digital storage systems and associated software except for

editing functions. Currently, IBM, in partnership with e-motion, is working with a leading British

broadcaster to archive its footage in digital form.

However, none of the customers have shown interest in GPFS and prefer entry level, lower end

storage systems57 that IBM has to offer. Einstein TV, www.einstein.tv/uk/index.asp, a British

company that broadcasts science documentaries, was among the first to use storage for digital

content management. Einstein TV deployed IBM’s entry-level systems (TV-in-a-box) that can be

installed within twenty days.

Adoption of IBM’s entry-level storage infrastructure systems is more extensive and now includes

the police departments in Great Britain. Video surveillance cameras track the movement of cars

in parking lots of crime-prone neighborhoods. The volume of visual records with police 57 Links to a detailed technical description of the systems can be found at http://www.storage.ibm.com/press/announce/20010921.html

departments is growing as digital cameras are installed in squad cars as well. IBM’s systems are

used to store, retrieve and analyze the information gathered with these cameras.

Dalet Digital Media Systems, a French content management company, has used the same

systems for satellite audio (XM radio) installed on luxury cars supplied by General Motors.

Storage needs of XM radio are high because it offers 100 or more channels of music.

IBM’s tape systems58, for rich media, is the other product that has gained market acceptance.

Entertainment Tonight uses it to cut costs of ingesting and logs of video tapes.

The rate of adoption of IBM’s SAN solutions is expected to increase with the expanded scope of

Einstien.tv’s future plans. By 2002, Einstein.tv plans to broadcast its content to sixteen countries

in six languages, which would necessitate conversions to several different TV standards,

translation into several different languages besides adapting to a variety of devices. Furthermore,

footage will be received from several different sources. A centralized repository, together with

content management tools, enables Einstein to lower the costs of conversions and distribution of

content to several different points of consumption.

6.3 Veritas (http://www.veritas.com/)

Veritas, the leader in storage management software space, offers an application NetBackup

Professional for mobile professionals. The product automatically saves corporate data that has

not been previously saved on laptops and mobile devices onto a central repository and can

recover data when it is lost. NetBackup( http://eval.veritas.com/downloads/pro/NBU-

P_white_paper_v3.pdf ) addresses the need to protect corporate data that is frequently lost when

laptops and other mobile devices are either damaged or stolen when executives are traveling.

The data on these devices is often of paramount importance to a company since mobile

professionals typically play key decision-making roles.

The actual adoption of the NetBackup product has not lived up to its promise despite the

opportunity costs of lost data, which can be as high as a quarter of a million dollars in some

cases. Customers continue to prefer synchronization with their desktops, which are connected to

58 Technical description of tape systems can be found at http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/tape/3584/index.html

a central repository. Price resistance is the chief reason for the cold response from the

customers; ASPs offered the product at a monthly charge of $ 10-15 for each user whereas

consumers are not willing to pay more than $ 3-5 a month for each user (even when the charge is

paid by an enterprise). At the peak of the boom in the year 2000, the ASPs were overly confident

that customers would be willing to pay their asking price.

The mood in the industry has changed following the slowdown in the economy. ASPs are

experimenting with vertical product differentiation, i.e., a broader range of prices and quality of

service for different segments of the consumers. They are realizing that customers have different

perceptions of urgency of recovery of data; price levels have to be adjusted to reflect the

expected level of service by individual classes of customers. The jury is, however, out on the

eventual success of the emerging pricing policy.

6.4 E-motion (www.emotion.com)

E-motion, a Los Angeles based media management software company, typifies a player that

takes advantage of storage technology to develop applications for a niche market in media

production management in the studios and the advertising industry. It develops software that

currently aids editing functions. The company is not convinced that a business case exists for use

of rich media content in other applications such as customer relationship management or supply

chain management.

E-motion caters to the enterprise market because its software tools, eMedia Partner

(http://www.emotion.com/mediafiles/pdf/mp_architecture.pdf) and Global Brand Manager,

are an aid to manage work processes in editing processes including storage and search of very

large repositories of rich media assets such as collections of photographs, corporate intranet,

video libraries within the media industry. Its software tools are used for archiving of digital assets

as well as for their distribution including e-commerce in digital assets. A distinctive feature of the

tools is their ability to search a piece of media by natural language keywords.

A typical customer of E-motion is an advertising company that needs to keeps its clients informed

so that a campaign can be organized within the scheduled time. The storage of work-in-progress

saves the time and tedium of waiting for customers to approve prototypes.

The preference for the enterprise market is reflected in E-motion’s recent expansion in Europe

instead of Japan. It acquired its reseller in the UK, Integrated Solutions Technology (IST), which

will also manage its business in continental Europe. Although E-motion’s partners have

encouraged its growth in Japan, E-motion is not geared to meet the demands of its growing

consumer markets for especially wireless applications.

In the near term future, E-motion sees a business case for extension of wireless capabilities, in

the enterprise market, for its tools especially in the European market and its new acquisition will

cultivate this market. In the USA itself, the market is small and restricted largely to collaboration

within the movie studios. One of its largest customers is BBC, which is looking to reduce costs of

conserving its footage.

The value proposition of E-motion’s software tools is the economy realized by geographical

dispersion of individual components of work processes in media creation to regions that excel in

them. For example, the shooting of footage can take place in East Asia, its processing may best

be done in the USA and it may be broadcast in Europe. However, scattered production can be in

conflict with time schedules when means are not available to quickly co-ordinate the activities of

works groups. Storage technologies facilitate collaboration by mirroring copies of work-in-

progress across geographical regions. Wireless capabilities are another aid to meet time

schedules by allowing instantaneous access for mark-up and approval of work completed.

E-motion’s products are sold as licenses to large enterprises or smaller companies pay a monthly

fee its ASPs, PictureQwest and Footage.com. As a software company, E.motion does not see

its long-term interests in the ASP business and recently sold PictureQwest to Creatas LLC.

6.5 Viafone (www.viafone.com)

ViaFone is a mobile applications platform (going by the moniker ViaFone Bridge) provider that

currently focuses on services deployed from behind the firewall. ViaFone has designed its servers

to offer both data and voice information services, with speech recognition technologies from

Nuance, for mobile phones and data devices. ViaFone expects its strategy to be more effective

as devices that can receive voice and data become available in the near future.

After testing the waters in the consumer market, ViaFone repositioned itself for the enterprise

market. The change was necessary to integrate the Customer Relationship Management and

Supply Chain Management databases of customers with user interfaces for applications that

ViaFone develops for salespeople and field forces especially in the electronics and

pharmaceutical industry.

For the consumer market, ViaFone continues to provide hosting services required to deliver

MySimon’s comparison-shopping web content to carriers including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.

The experience prepared ViaFone to tailor content for a variety of devices used by customers, to

scale up its operations and to sustain the service for over a year.

The combination of voice and data services is especially useful for its vertical market in the semi-

conductor industry where field staff has to work from inside dust-free zones where the use of

mobile data devices is prohibited. Field maintenance staff had to bear with the arduous process

of moving in an out of these regulated zones, besides taking-off their hoods and putting them

back, before they could use their mobile data devices. The access to voice information services,

received on phones, saves all this trouble.

In addition, voice information services can reach locations where wireless networks don’t have

coverage. Typically, wireless signals don’t reach basements. Salespeople in the pharmaceutical

industry travel a great deal and can use their time to receive information while they are driving.

The advantage of voice services is gained at relatively low incremental costs of 5 to 10% in

situations where customers already have databases.

ViaFone is required to cater to enterprises’ need for security and integration with a variety of

databases and protocols, including the legacy versions, to be able to work behind a firewall. In an

outsourcing situation, on the other hand, the environment is not as diverse since enterprises do

not farm out mostly web content and keep mission critical information services in-house.

The services offered by ViaFone meet CRM and SCM information needs of salespeople and field

engineers. Salespeople require information on customer demand and order flow, the staple of

CRM databases, and also make use of remote file management services such as faxing

documents on customer sites. This is especially true in the pharmaceutical industry where a great

deal of product information is exchanged. Field staff alone use the supply chain management

databases to manage deliveries from manufacturing to be able to meet delivery schedules. They

also use SCM databases to communicate information from customers, in real time, to ensure that

equipment manufactured for them is customized for their needs.

Tellme (www.tellme.com)

Tellme integrates speech recognition technology from Naunce with back-end Internet

technologies to provide voice information and application services. It has two types of markets—

the consumer market which it serves in collaboration with AT&T Wireless. The other market is the

enterprise market where it caters to several verticals.

In the initial stages, the quality of voice recognition had to be substantially improved especially

because consumers’ queries are not the standard variety. Prolonged testing has tripled the levels

of self-service.

Whereas traditional IVR technology used proprietary technology, Tellme uses VoiceXML, to take

advantage of component based web services model to integrate with the standards based

Internet Infrastructure. Unlike IVR, VoiceXML does not require a separate infrastructure for voice

information services.

By separating the location of the web application logic from data storage, the Tellme is able to

take advantage of scale economies possible from outsourced storage services. The back-end

infrastructure is managed by Exodus Communications. In addition, Tellme is able to allocate

storage on demand in sync with seasonal fluctuations of call volume in individual industries.

In a typical web services strategic model, Tellme offers an application development platform with

a library of components that developers can use to design customized solutions for their

customers in individual industries. Tellme does the grunt work of integrating computer-telephony

equipment with data centers, upgrading speech recognition software to respond to varying

accents and to manage the network while the developers have an operating infrastructure to run

their applications.

For the enterprise market, voice recognition technology is used to automate call center functions

and to provide notifications. Typically, the automation of call center functions includes routine

information such as flight information for airlines, location and driving instructions for banks, stock

quotes and company information for brokerage houses, etc. Notifications are used to prompt

users about say scheduled flights.

6.6 Openwave (http://www.openwave.com)

Openwave entered the market with software solutions for wireless applications, such as unified

messaging, based on the WAP protocol. It has expanded the portfolio to include VoiceXML based

products and has plans for I-mode based applications. It plans to offers its voice applications,

based on VoiceXML, to carriers in partnership with CTI2, CISCO and I-Basis. CTI2 contributes its

WW Messenger, a unified mail-box that receives and responds to messages from phone, fax,

telephone or a wireless device. I-Basis is an ASP that hosts the open systems unified messaging

solutions on behalf of carriers and Openwave does the backend integration. Openwave integrates

CISCO’s voice gateways with VoiceXML to offer voice portal services.

Openwave switched from EMC and Sun Microsystems for its storage needs to Network

Appliance, a company that specializes in network attached storage. The original suppliers

insisted on retaining their proprietary systems while Network Appliances was responsive to open

systems that would collaborate with other competing vendors. Openwave reported much lower

cost of installation of storage devices from Network Appliance besides ease of migration to

competing storage products when they are needed.

Despite the ease of implementation of proprietary systems provided by EMC and Sun

Microsystems, carriers found that their costs of storage management would rise as they added

new applications such as unified messaging. Each time they add an application, they had to

scrap their previous investments in hardware and software. Furthermore, storage costs are rising,

as much larger voice files have to be accommodated in the devices. Network Appliances

provided better value for money.

6.7 Datadirectnet ( http://www.datadirectnet.com/)

DataDirect Network is focused on providing storage solutions for a range of rich media

applications and video-on-demand is the thrust of its current activity. It builds storage appliances

that combine the functions of RAID controllers, Fiber channel switches and a cache to reduce

latencies in data transfers for streaming media applications. It has partnerships with InfoValue

and Vsoft to provide video streaming solutions.

The SAN Data Director, a SAN appliance and the key product of the company, has been

designed to provide the efficiencies required to achieve the quality of service that is a prerequisite

for rich media applications. Latencies in data flows from the storage device to the streaming

server are reduced in the following ways

Fiber channel switches and RAID controllers have traditionally mediated access to

storage disks. Latency penalties are incurred as data flows from each of these RAIDs to the Fiber

Channel switch. The delays cascade when multiple layers of switches are required to transfer

data in larger systems. SAN Data Director eliminates these delays because it has twenty

embedded Fiber Channel ports that receive data in parallel streams. When several servers call

data from storage devices, they can make conflicting demands on switches and shared RAID

controllers, which lowers the throughput of data. By contrast, data flowing in parallel streams

does not cause such problems.

SAN Data Director adjusts the size of the data block to the volume of data flow.

Traditionally a block of data is broken down into stripes, which are distributed over eight disks.

The unit cost of processing a stripe of data rises as the size of the data block decreases. SAN

DataDirector uses a single LUN with varying numbers of tiers; when volume of data rises the tiers

increase and vice versa.

Most of the data transfer to the host takes place from a cache at electronic speeds, which

are higher than data transferred from physical disks. High Speed Traffic Directors(HSTD), a

software built into the SAN DataDirector, enables the transfer from the cache to the host. Delays

in searching data from the cache are minimized in several ways; the HSTD manages the cache,

aided by the company’s proprietary software, such that the least used pages are discarded. In

addition, another piece of software tracks related blocks of data and schedules their consecutive

transfer when any one of them is required. Finally, proprietary software developed by DataDirect

Network searches data from the cache in real time before the connection with the channel is lost.

Efficiencies in transfer of streaming media is achieved by sending a single master copy

from one end to another instead of congesting the infrastructure with numerous streams that

enter the network when numerous viewers watch a program.

For wireless customers, data is transmitted in eight parallel streams to avoid the

congestion that will follow when data has to be transmitted to several towers in a region.

6.8 Generic Media (www.genericmedia.com)

Streaming media has not been widely adopted because of the high cost of its delivery and its

inconsistent quality. For media companies, on the other hand, streaming media is potentially an

attractive alternative channel for distribution that can expand the market for their content.

Streaming media meets distinctive needs since it can be viewed on demand and at users’ site of

choice. Generic Media is one among several other companies that have set out to reduce the

cost of delivery of streaming media as well as to improve the users experience of viewing.

One of the sources of inefficiency in the delivery of streaming media is the cost of producing a

large number of copies of content each of them tailored to a particular media player such as

QuickTime. In addition, the bit rates for each of these players can vary to suit the bandwidth

available with a user. Furthermore, media companies have to cope with the uncertainty that is

created by the emergence of new media players and changing availability of bandwidth.

Generic Media’s Media Publishing Service is a means by which a master copy of the content can

be created that can be transformed for any other format and bit rate automatically. The software

is constituted of three components—the Generic Media Transformation Engine, the Generic

Media Publishing Manager and the Generic Media Delivery Manager. The Generic Media

Delivery Manager detects the users’ settings including the player, its format and the bit rates, the

Transformation Engine reformats the master copy to suit the environment and the Publishing

Manager configures the content for a particular user.

Such a service does not intimidate the user who is not required to make any selection of the

media media player the bandwidth settings or any other plug-in. Content can be downloaded from

the Internet by simply clicking the hyperlink.

Generic Media has also developed a bandwidth limiter that manages overflows of traffic that are a

common experience with streaming media. Access to a service is restricted before demand

exceeds the volumes that the pipe can channelize.

Finally, it has developed a gMovie Player for Palm Pilot for streaming media applications for

wireless devices.

6.9 Digital Fountain (http://www.digitalfountain.com)

Streaming media can mimic the economics of traditional media if its unit costs fall with the

expansion of its user base. The fixed costs in traditional media are incurred at the outset and unit

costs fall with the increase in the numbers of viewers. By contrast, the costs of delivery rise

linearly with streaming media as the number of users increase. This is because each client

requires a server each to complete a request for content and the bandwidth needs rise

proportionately. The math for streaming media will be more like that of traditional media if a

single master copy is delivered from the core to any edge site. Digital Fountain’s products,

Streaming Fountain and Download Fountain, find solutions to prevent costs from rising in

proportion to the number of users.

The traditional means of transferring data on the Internet, TCP/IP, was designed for short bursts

of traffic. It organizes data in packets that are sent across sequentially. In a broadcast situation, a

stream of packets carries small bits of information (payload) from a server to a client. The

complexity of carrying data in this fashion grows when packets are resent to correct for errors.

Digital Fountain’s family of products needs only a single server to transmit data to multiple clients.

The original content is transformed into metacontent or a master copy that is transmitted from a

server to numerous clients which could be an equivalent of a TV audience. Each copy of the

metacontent is composed of several components that are related to each other just as individual

variables are in a linear equation. The individual components are transmitted separately on a

network and reconstructed by the client. Unlike the TCP/IP method of transmission, the client

does not need all the components of the content to reconstruct the master copy. Instead, a

subset of the components is adequate while the rest are pieced together based on their inter-

relationships.

Digital Fountain’s technologies are meant for transportation that caters to the need for on-demand

viewing. The applications include training and corporate communications needs of large

enterprises who have to reach their employees in several branch offices, satellite

communications, video-on-demand (when a fully IP cable broadband access is available) and

transfer of data from the core to edge sites as well as data transfer on wireless networks.

Currently, Digital Fountain is implementing its technology in the satellite communications sector.

Typically, satellite communications companies transmit data three times from their Transponders

to earth stations to compensate for possible losses caused by atmospheric disturbances. This

would not be necessary with technology available from Digital Fountain since the information can

be reconstructed from some components that constitute the master copy.

In addition, Digital Fountain is negotiating with wireless carriers who have multiple subscribers

sharing bandwidth. The noise level increases as the numbers of customers and volumes of data

transferred for each user rises. Digital Fountain is positioning its products for attenuation of the

signal loss in transmission.

6.10 Airborne Entertainment (http://www.airborne-e.com)

Airborne Entertainment is one company that seeks to make the much-anticipated transition from

staple wireless applications, such as e-mail and calendars, to sale of entertainment content. Its

business model explicitly emulates NTT DoComo in North America in that it sees mass adoption

of wireless Internet access on the strength of content that consumers will be willing to pay for.

Airborne Entertainment specializes in short attention span entertainment, such as comic strips,

humor, etc., that can make-do with the available bandwidth with 2 or 2.5 G wireless phones. The

early success in winning business from the largest carriers, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, points to

the potential for creating business for wireless content that will in turn create a demand for

storage.

The key planks of the business model that Airborne Entertainment is implementing are as follows:

Its content strategy excludes video content that it sees as unsuitable for the small size of

wireless devices in the near-term future as well as in the longer-term.

The distinctive value of wireless entertainment lies in its interactivity; FM radio provides

similar content but does not encourage the same level of participation from the audience.

Carriers increasingly see themselves as retailers of content that is the primary source of

revenue; advertisements, as the sole source of revenue, cannot be a viable model of business.

Publishing companies, like Airborne Entertainment, are valuable to carriers since they become

the conduits for sale of content produced by numerous small companies. In addition, they

provide customer support, service level agreements, etc.

Unlike the traditional media companies, Airborne has an edge in content distribution

technologies. Airborne’s proprietary technology, RUNWAY, can be tailored to meet the specific

needs of wireless carriers such as optimizing content for several different devices,

personalization of content, supporting SMS for a variety of protocols, billing, etc.

6.11 I-DRIVE (http://www.idrive.com/)

I-drive is a middleware company whose software provides solutions primarily for personal

storage requirements. Its products facilitate the storage, file sharing and file management of

especially rich media content. Typically, customers use its software to download documents from

the web, music files or store digital photographs that can be shared with family and friends.

Enterprise customers use its storage for saving documents that they can access remotely.

Till recently, I-drive offered 50MB of free storage where customers could download their files. The

software and the storage services were targeted at mobile users who could share files by

transferring them between accounts on the storage device, download from the web for later

viewing or print files without straining the limited bandwidth available with their mobile devices.

The middleware facilitates the interface with a variety of devices, transcodes content for a diverse

range of players and bit rates and mediates between varying protocols used for messaging.

The main source of revenue for I-drive in the early days was from its contracts signed with

twenty-five universities. Storage provided to students on campuses was paid for by the

administration from the tuition fees. Usage patterns in the universities indicated a strong interest

in multi-media content. Students used 55% of their space for multi-media files equally divided

between audio and image files while 40% was used for documents and 5 % for zip files.

I-drive has abandoned its efforts to cultivate a retail market for its software, which it initially

promoted by offering free storage. The company admitted that the free service was made

possible by venture capital, which could not any longer be sustained. As a middleware company,

I-drive does not see itself servicing the retail market where brands count. Instead, it is

collaborating with carriers and ISPs to offer its software as a package of value-added services

that consumers would be willing to pay for.

6.12 Deep Bridge (http://www.deepbridge.com/)

Deep Bridge specializes in developing content management solutions for text and pictures

repositories that are required in the pharmaceutical industry for regulatory purposes and in the

financial industry for regulatory reporting. The company has a conservative view of the

possibilities of content management solutions for rich media repositories; it sees a limited

potential for them in niches like mass media houses.

Currently, Deep Bridge does not see a prospect of remote searches of data on storage area

networks. The Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) required to search for information

managed by a variety of operating systems have not yet been developed. Similarly, efforts at

personalization, delivery of content independent of the media players, etc, have achieved limited

results on account of the slow progress in standards based applications development.

Deep Bridge does not foresee a significant potential for growth of markets since content

distribution to retail markets is hamstrung on account of bandwidth limitations. The modest

diffusion of broadband in the last mile and bandwidth limitations in wireless sector stymies the

flow of information to the customers.

The focus of the company’s effort is to develop a relational database that will help to search for

specific components of content available in a repository.

6.13 Broadstream (http://www.broadstream.com/)

BroadStream has developed software tools that measure usage patterns and quality of service as

experienced at the consumer end. Currently, content providers have no other means, besides the

log files of Content Delivery Networks, to determine both the usage and the quality of

transmission. Inevitably, the data available from log files is unreliable and does not provide

adequate information.

The rate of adoption of streaming media is low because consumer experience is not yet

satisfactory. Bandwidth limitations are not the only cause of poor quality of experience with

streaming media; standards based MPEG players permit narrowband transmission as well.

Content Delivery Networks can improve the quality of transmission if service level agreements

were monitored.

Furthermore, content providers need data on usage and the quality of reception to estimate

consumer willingness to pay for programming and to enforce copyright laws. They can implement

pay-per-view programs if they knew the data consumed by individual customers and price

according to the quality of reception.

Streaming media provides recourse to enterprises to reduce their costs of travel incurred for

training and corporate communications. Some companies like Hewlett Packard and Cisco have

taken to streaming media in the current economic slowdown. Many other enterprises are unwilling

to follow because they do not want to risk disruption in their mission critical applications. In the

absence of real time data on bandwidth usage, bandwidth utilization rates are unpredictable

which can jeopardize mission critical applications. Several companies, therefore, prefer to shut

down less important applications.

The technologies for load balancing that ensure the consistency in the quality of transmission of

HTTP traffic were not designed to achieve the same purpose with streaming media. A page once

viewed remains in the browser and its quality is unaffected by subsequent congestion on the

Internet. If another page is requested, data can be routed from the least congested server.

Consumers who connect to a media server, on the other hand, experience deterioration in quality

as the numbers watching a program increase. BroadStream’s Media sensor measures the quality

of reception in real time and BroadStream’s Fusion Center redirects traffic to a server best able to

serve the demand after it receives the information.

Currently, log files available from Content Delivery Networks aggregate information on data

served from several servers spread over a location. The reports generated from such data are

available after a lag of time. It is difficult to interpret the data because it does not relate to any

specific customer. Finally, the log file data matches the data transmitted to data received rather

than the data received to the bandwidth.

BroadStream’s Media Sensor helps to gather information about each customer, who remains

anonymous and is identified by a number, and gathers information about the bit rate, quality of

service and extent of usage. The data is gathered in real time, which aids capacity planning on

the fly.

Currently, content delivery networks decide on storage of content on the basis of probability of

usage on the edge sites. Consequently, content is often replicated in more edge sites than is

necessary. The data on usage, collected in real time, can be used to route traffic to the edge

when it is required so that a great deal of replication can be saved. However, software to take

advantage of the data gathered at customer sites is not yet developed.

The information on quality of service can be used to route traffic from a broader selection of

content delivery networks than is the case now. Currently, customers prefer reputed

organizations like Akamai, Digital Island or I-Beam. Content providers can afford to be agnostic

about their vendors if had a way to measure the quality of their service. They would then be able

to manage traffic optimally and reduce their costs.

6.14 Vicinity (www.vicinity.com)

Vicinity, a start-up offering enterprise location based services, is focused on providing licensing

and hosted services to multi-location companies such as retail chains, hotels and automobile

companies. Customers use the licensed software to provide location information, on their web

sites, to their clients. Two of its data centers also offer similar services off-site from its own web

site (http://www.mapblast.com/). License and hosting revenue accounted for $16 million of the

total of $ 20 million that the company generated in fiscal year 2001.

Although corporations have been purchasing Vicinity’s services, the beneficiaries are their

customers rather than employees using them for operational purposes. The staple of its

services are web based business finder, maps, driving directions and directory services, which

accounted for 76% of the revenue in the nine-month period ending April 30, 2001, 65% in fiscal

2000, 86% in fiscal 1999 and 91% of our revenues in fiscal 1998. The declining share of these

services reflects a trend towards an increasing emphasis on enterprise services.

Currently, a typical customer of Vicinity is Federal Express, which provides information on drop-

off locations on its web site for customers. The acquisition of over 300 of such multi-location

clients has prepared the way for developing enterprise services. In the immediate future,

Vicinity will offer data on supplies available at each of the centers of its customers such as

GAP. The data volumes are expected to rise from tens of Gigabytes to Terabytes with the

addition of these services alone.

Spatial intelligence is another enterprise opportunity that is available to Vicinity as a result of

recent customer acquisition. A typical application is to analyze the location aspects of matching

supply and customer need. Wells Fargo bank, for example, is interested in finding out the

distances between its branches and Coca Cola’s outlets in individual cities and neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the established vendors of CRM applications like Siebel have extended their

capabilities into wireless space. This presents an opportunity for Vicinity because it has skills in

geo-coding that CRM companies need before they can offer location-based services. Geo-

coding under girds services such as time proximity search or estimate of time required to move

from one location to another.

Over the longer run, Vicinity is betting on location based field service automation services.

However, mission critical services of this nature require deployment from behind the firewall

acquisition of additional technological capabilities to integrate with related enterprise

applications.

Currently, its development effort is focused on usability aspects of its products. Although,

Vicinity is not looking to invest in integrating imagery information, it is working on the quality of

its vector data. It purchased BeeLine in 2000 to improve the rendering of maps. Customers will

now be able to zoom in and zoom out using the new capabilities.

Positional accuracy and location awareness is another aspect of improving the usability of

location-based services. Currently, customers feed their zip code information, which covers an

area much too large for customers who use the services to save time, resources and effort.

Vicinity has partnered with Signal Soft to add sensors to cellular phones, which will identify the

location within a 100-meter range. Customers will be presented with options, on any aspect of

their choice, available within that location.

However, positional inaccuracies will continue to be a thorn in the development of enterprise

applications. Vicinity’s geo-coding is able to estimate the spatial parameters of a destination

with an error rate that does not exceed 7 square foot. Location identification has ways to go

before it can match that accuracy.

Although Vicinity has incurred huge losses of $27.3 million (including a $ 7.6 million one time

charge) in fiscal year 2001 compared to $ 16.5 million in 2000, it has cash reserves of over $

94 million to continue the development effort. It will also benefit from the completion of the

development of an Enterprise Location Server that helps to increase the reliability of the

services offered.

6.15 Mediabin (www.MediaBin.com)

Mediabin is positioned to meet the brand asset management workflow needs of large enterprises

such as Ford Motor Company. Its software automates the tasks of filing, indexing, retrieving and

reformatting images and related marketing assets for a variety of media such as print and the

web. Assets are centralized in a repository that serves as a clearinghouse for users, inside the

enterprise for use by all databases, and by partners. A key component is the metadata that helps

users, whatever their preferred tool, access the assets.

Digital asset management (‘DAM’) software for rich media management has been available with

entertainment and printing/publishing companies but has not been deployed beyond these

vertical markets. MediaBin sees a more compelling need for managing the flow of brand-related

content within a large multinational company.

MediaBin’s marketing strategy is intended to save customers the cost and the complexities that

they experience in preparing content, especially images, and in deploying brand assets within

and beyond the enterprise. Currently, customers have to pay in excess of $100,000 to purchase a

license for a content management tool. MediaBin chooses to provide an infrastructure that is

focused on the management and deployment of digital brand assets. The company’s image

management and its support for standards (especially XML, and COM, Java and PERL APIs)

allows easy interface with other systems. The license for MediaBin’s software begins at $50,000

and the price increases with complexity. MediaBin’s portal type of software, with a directory of

files and file management tools, can be deployed within a day as long as a file structure is already

in place.

Large enterprises like the automobile companies have to cope with a welter of brand related

collateral as they offer numerous models in the market place. Images and other related

information lies scattered with advertising firms, marketing agencies and market communications

departments within the enterprise. Within a company, several departments create content which

they need to share. A repository reduces the workflow between these departments. MediaBin has

developed a platform to create the applications to manage images centralized in a repository.

The need to reuse images has grown as the number of channels of communications and

participants has grown, due mostly to the emergence of the web. Images have to be rendered in

a variety of formats such as JPEG, TIFF, PDF, etc., besides innumerable shapes, colors,

resolutions and sizes. In more recent times, MediaBin has had to respond to the demand for

version management of images.

The latest upgrade version of MediaBin’s software graduates from workflow management for a

workgroup to enterprise wide management of brand assets. It has enhanced its software to scale

and has broadened the range of file types that can be previewed via a browser, to include PDFs

and MS Office documents such as PowerPoint presentations. In order to handle larger volumes

of traffic, the software enables management from a cluster of servers each of them specializing in

specific types of traffic, e.g., data flow from images comes in larger blocks than related textual

material.

Metadata, and its incorporation with the media file in an XML “wrapper,” plays a key role in the

enterprise version of the software. It serves as the intersection point for content to flow between

departments and users to search for the content they need.

Security features had to be enhanced to enable access for especially participants outside the

enterprise. The browser has been redeveloped to allow access and downloading of assets after

password checks.

MediaBin has been encouraged to integrate media related workflow processes in the entire

enterprise by changing attitudes of the IT departments. The large volumes of rich media-

generated traffic were anathema to IT departments. Lately, the increasing numbers of customers

of images within the enterprise has forced a reappraisal with IT departments.

6.16 Scale Eight (www.scale8.com)

Scale Eight is a start-up offering Internet based storage services with a niche market in the rich

media segment. Unlike the incumbents, such as StorageNetworks and Storability, Scale Eight

serves clients who prefer to outsource the management of all storage services outside the

firewall.

The hallmark of Scale Eight services is that file management happens locally on a web browser

or on a LAN within an enterprise. Customers also have the option to mirror their file systems in

several locations spread around the world with its Global Storage Port device. Scale Eight’s

services are, therefore, particularly useful for collaboration within enterprises with subsidiaries

around the globe.

The Global Storage Port device is attached to the local area network and the file system is

cached locally at customer premises. Customers manage storage devices resident on the four

central locations, in San Francisco, Tokyo, London and Virginia on Scale Eight’s network.

Scale Eight does not cater to the security sensitive applications that have to be offered on the

premises of enterprises. By creating an infrastructure outside the enterprise on the Internet, Scale

Eight does not have to work with proprietary software and associated equipment available from

costly vendors like EMC. Scale Eight uses commodity equipment, JBODs, and standard software

to drive down the costs to a fifth of the incumbents. The current price of its service is $30 per

managed mirrored gigabyte compared to $150 from competitors.

Predictably, Scale Eight’s sweet spot is personal storage, including executive baggage, which

includes mostly music files from MSN music services besides digital photographs, digital images

and video. Overall, the market is split into half each between the consumer and the business

segments. The market for visual files is divided equally between digital photography/images and

video. The company is also exploring wireless markets in European markets but does not see an

immediate prospect in the USA.

7 CONCLUSIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS STRATEGY

Storage area networks are analogous to radar systems in the airline industry whilst wireless

technologies are like individual aircraft. Just like data from individual aircraft are received at a

central point to decide on landing and take-off schedules for aircraft, storage area networks

accumulate information and churn out alerts for the mobile staff of an enterprise. Similarly,

wireless devices like airplanes receive data from a central point about possible dangers to them

en route. Enterprises would find as hard to function as airlines would without their radar

systems; they will cease to be agile enough to be relevant in the marketplace.

Storage industry’s transition from directly attached storage and LAN-attached storage to

storage area networks has far reaching ramifications for information management and business

strategy in the near-term future. The value of information is dramatically enhanced when large

volumes of related data are gathered and correlated at a single point to draw out significant

patterns for decision making purposes. Its utility is also augmented by ease of search of

information at a granular level so that information can be reused. Finally, the value of

information rises as it is shared more widely in a variety of situations. Storage technologies,

especially network storage, have the ability to achieve all these goals.

The boundaries separating sources of information, such as their medium of publishing, location,

computing systems, will begin to wither and all data will be flow into colossal repositories.

Businesses will be able to use not only textual information but also imagery, moving pictures,

photography and voice data to their competitive advantage. Imagine the impact of catalogs with

not only still photographs but also movie footage to demonstrate the capabilities of a product

like digital cameras to on-line buyers who may not have previous exposure to them.

Multi-media communication is creating new possibilities for managing work processes. The

engineering industry, for example, can use a combination of imagery, design graphics and

textual data that has to be often exchanged between field staff engaged in construction and the

planning staff working from offices. The entire documentation, accessed from a single source,

can be shared by all staff members working on-site.

LAN attached storage devices were a help at a time when enterprises needed to raise the

efficiency of work groups. Storage area networks allow enterprises across several locations to

collaborate with each other. A striking illustration is the advertising industry which often has

clients spread over several locations or its value chain includes shooting, production and

distribution spread over several locations worldwide. The availability of work-in-progress on

storage area networks helps the groups working in different locations to collaborate since time

lags in receiving the material is reduced to virtually zero.

Storage technologies will play a critical role in the commercial viability of a whole new range of

products and services by providing capacious capacity for storage. Services such as digital

photography and video-on-demand will simply not be possible without large volumes of

storage. Unified Messaging has been unaffordable for the large majority of potential customers

because of its high cost. Storage technologies, aided by software tools for management of

capacity, can substantially lower the costs of managing messages.

Similarly, the commodious storage capacities of storage area networks have aided the rise of

the voice information industry. Speech recognition technologies, create large files that would be

hard to use without the cavernous storage capacity of SANs. The very same files can be

mirrored on several sites for convenient access locally. The prohibitive costs of maintaining call

centers can be lowered by automation enabled by speech recognition technologies besides

rescuing customers from the “menu-hell” of interactive voice recognition systems.

The distributed nature of storage area networks creates new channels that can diversify the

revenue sources. Revenue realization for movies is hamstrung by the inability to cater to

smaller size audience. A striking illustration is the grossly underserved education market for

documentaries. Movie halls are not amenable to viewing on demand. Similarly, car owners

require content on demand unlike the preferences of mass audiences. Storage area networks

have the ability to serve customers on demand and to view content in their preferred ways.

Channel diversity is not limited to the flexibility in distribution of content to audience types. The

users of content can be differentiated by the diversity of devices especially among owners of

wireless handsets. Typically, format needs differ such as the standards used for playing movies

and the language. Storage area networks, aided by related content management tools, can

convert content from one format to another or from one language to another in real time

allowing its reuse.

Corporate strategy, especially decision making, will be fundamentally transformed by the

capabilities that storage technologies afford. Storage technologies enable a quantum leap in

the volumes, velocity and variety of information so that the quality and speed of decision

making is greatly improved. The shorter lead times enable companies to make price

adjustments to supply and demand imbalances in near time. Errors in decision making will be

reduced as companies have the ability to process inter-related information, compare their

metrics with best practices and to check with their past experience.

Correlations between pieces of information are possible when the data is defined abstractly

before relationships can be drawn. Metadata, or the data describing data, plays a crucial role in

discerning the relationships in disparate pieces of very large volumes of information. A great of

health information is meaningful when it can be related with patient information. Similarly, all

location information can be interpreted when it is related to spatial co-ordinates. Past

information on a patient, record of illnesses in youth, is useful in making decisions about

diagnosis of a person when he or she grows old. None of this would be feasible if the inter-

related information cannot be retrieved and presented in an intelligible format to the user in real

time.

Agility will be the byword of enterprises who take advantage of storage technologies. Field

forces and sales staff especially will benefit from time saved on paperwork and the ability to

access information to service consumers’ faster. The maintenance of far flung assets will be

faster as field forces navigate to their specific destinations aided by graphically rich maps that

they can view on their handheld devices. They can review technical information on the tip of

their fingers to service their clients. Sales personnel will not be burdened by the document

luggage; they can print remotely accessed documents on customer sites. They can also be

alerted to opportunities, e.g. trucks can be alerted about parcels they can pick up by delaying

their departures.

The agility of enterprises will greatly increase as business processes are streamlined by

reducing paper work and duplication in document generation. Documents are often referred by

several participants in an enterprise; the consequent paper shuffle causes duplication at

several levels and slows down decision making as information flows from one point to another.

The health industry is a classic example of an industry that is bogged down by paperwork.

Once documents are available centrally on storage area networks, they can be viewed

conveniently much like any information is on the Internet.

Enterprises create brand related imaging and related collateral which can be shared rather than

duplicated when it is stored on a device. Advertising agencies can, for example, keep their

work-in-progress on a storage area network so that their clients can plan their campaigns.

When the collateral is ready, it can be published not only for printed publications but also on the

web. A great deal of duplication takes place because the collateral has to be published in a

variety of shapes and sizes, different resolutions and color shades. These conversions can

happen quickly and with low incremental costs if the template is stored at a single point.

Network storage is evolving into a grid which would be as ubiquitous as electrical networks in

the near term future. Storage providers are integrating fragmented networks by joining them

with the abundant dark fiber, converted into optical networks, widely available in the USA and

elsewhere in the world. Pioneering companies like Giant Loop and In Range Technologies

have set the stage for global storage area networks.

The process is completed by logical representation of the physical capacity by virtualization

software before centralized management of the entire network becomes possible. A bevy of

start-ups such as Datacore Software, Legato and Falconstore supported by financially strong

companies like IBM will accelerate the process of centralized management of storage area

networks.

The full benefit of storage area networks will be realized when software for storage

management is deployed with success. Storage hardware, installed in the initial stages, has

been underutilized because software for its optimal utilization was not widely adopted.

Economic pressures of the recent recession are driving companies to make greater use of

software to manage their storage hardware as a single network and to distribute the load

evenly over all disks and tapes.

Initial progress in tying storage devices has been limited to homogenous devices within the

enterprises for security reasons. Over time, heterogeneous devices will also be inter-connected

in a single storage area network as companies agree to share APIs for inter-operability. For

security reasons, networks will not be entirely open but some segments of the industry catering

to needs such as digital photography and imaging will take advantage of bargains available

from outsourcing solutions.

The speed of retrieval of information is limited by the inability to increase the speed of operation

of disks. This will be mitigated by parallel processing that is possible by dividing information

flows into several streams of data. File systems are increasingly able to manage parallel

streams of traffic.

Widespread adoption of SANs depends a great deal on the quality of service available to

customers. In a shared environment, companies can experience inconsistency of performance

as clients make conflicting demands on storage capacity. This would be unacceptable to I/O

intensive applications like data warehouse applications that have to offer consistent

performance such as query time.

Cost reduction will be another major driver of greater adoption of storage area networks. Disk

drives are way too costly for many of the applications especially where images are utilized.

Tapes present a viable alternative to disks to reduce costs especially if their latencies can be

lowered. Near-line tape storage promises to increase the adoption of tapes to substantially

reduce the costs of managing imaging data.

Storage technologies not only enable new applications their commercial acceptance is also

dependent on the progress of applications. In the near term future, several applications will

come to fruition after years of nurturing. Digital photography is one of the major new

applications that create storage needs and an application that lends itself to mass usage. The

conditions for its widespread adoption are available as traditional photographs can now be

digitized, digital photographs can be processed conveniently at kiosks, work with common

software such as Windows XP and communicated over the Internet. In addition, agreement on

metadata standards will enable reuse of photographs. Storage demand will increase in step to

enable sharing of digital photographs.

Similarly, medical applications of storage have long been dormant because clinical information

systems were resistant to automation. The primary reason for slow progress in the health

industry was the lack of consensus over the vocabulary of medical terms, its logical

representation and the metadata. These barriers have been overcome so that data integration

in medical enterprises is now possible. Health enterprises can substantially reduce opportunity

costs since duplication in paperwork is common and time delays are extremely costly when

expensive equipment is idle. In addition, the speed and quality of decision making will greatly

improve as the volumes, velocity and variety of information available increases aided by

storage technologies.

Location based services will grow as the initial spade work of rendering map data has been

largely completed. Increasingly, LBS companies will correlate map information with related

attribute information besides imagery and aerial photography to offer premium services.

Storage demand will increase especially as media intensive services are offered. Enterprises

are likely to adopt the more advanced services available.

Vehicle Telematics is growing out of its infancy as entertainment and information services are

offered besides the staple safety and security services. Voice information services will greatly

facilitate the delivery of information services. Mobile professionals are likely to be receptive to

information services that they require in the daily routine of their business. Satellite audio

entertainment has already been launched and its success will encourage several other

companies to offer entertainment services to vehicles.

Business Intelligence and Customer Relationship Management data warehouses have an

established market which will grow in size as the variety of information gathered increases. In

addition, the adoption of BI/CRM will be a boost to the growth of related services such as

location based services and remote document retrieval.

Storage area networks will increasingly drive the adoption of wireless technologies as the

backlog of integration of work processes and information technologies utilized by storage

technologies is completed. Wireless technologies will improve communication with customers

and the quality of services available to them. For a low incremental cost of integrating wireless

technologies, mobile computing will reap the gains from the enormous investments in storage

technologies.