EMC Corp. is focusing on bandwidth next week at the NetWorld+Interop conference in Atlanta. The storage vendor hopes to show that the eruption of available, affordable bandwidth will have a direct impact on the way companies deploy storage, according to company officials.
Michael Ruettgers, CEO of EMC, will try to "up the awareness" of the approaching boom in bandwidth by addressing the importance of the convergence of optical and storage networking as it pertains to the enterprise operations, according to Jim Rothnie, senior vice president of product management at the Hopkinton, Mass.-based storage giant.
"There is this huge bandwidth explosion due to optical fiber and the physical mechanisms for networking," Rothnie said last week.
Analysts agree that the bandwidth boom is on. According to Cahners In-Stat Group, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based industry research firm, the networking equipment market, which provides the bandwidth backbone, hit US$11.8 billion last June and is expected to reach $50 billion by the end of the year.
"The rapid deployment of optical fiber is creating so much bandwidth that we ought to be thinking about the right way to deploy storage where bandwidth is infinite and inexpensive," Rothnie said.
Previewing Ruettgers' message, Rothnie said that by taking advantage of this sudden availability in bandwidth and directly linking storage to optical networks, the enterprise can extend the reach of SANs (storage area networks) to provide faster access to data and more efficient mirroring and backup capabilities.
Key to the convergence of optical and storage networks are multiplexing switches, devices that route all incoming data traffic onto an optical network. EMC believes multiplexing switches will increase "a millionfold" by 2005, Rothnie said.
Manufactured by companies such as San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems and Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel Networks, multiplexing switches provide enterprises with the ability to connect their local networks to incoming traffic from metropolitan networks that carry data in a variety of protocols, such as IP or wireline data. Cisco's multiplexing switch, for example, can support 32 wavelengths of incoming data on one line of fiber, regardless of its original protocol.
Rethinking storage deployment from a bandwidth-rich perspective is a recommendation shared by storage competitor StorageNetworks, according to John Clavin, senior vice president of marketing at the Waltham, Mass.-based company. Representatives from StorageNetworks will be on hand at the conference to discuss the challenges of merging storage management and network management.
Clavin claimed that StorageNetworks' entire business has been based on the premise that the day would arrive when bandwidth would become as plentiful as is now predicted. But Clavin credits the reduction in price of bandwidth -- not sudden availability -- for making it easier for enterprises to deploy storage in "a regionally distributed environment" rather than all packed together in one or more data centers.
"We are now in an environment where a lot of those costs have come down considerably, and where a regionally managed network is now within reach," Clavin said.
Deploying SANs
Vendors struck several optical and storage alliances in 2000.
* Brocade SAN switches and Cisco DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) products will be interoperable.
* ONI Systems, Brocade partner to interconnect SANs over optical networks.
* Alidian Networks allies with Gadzoox Networks and CNT Networks to carry SAN protocols.
* Sorrento Networks signs with Inrange to bring DWDM products to storage systems.