Quantum hopes to cash in on post-Sept 11 surge in storage systems demand

Our eFE Bureau in Bangalore

The storage systems market, hit by the ongoing slowdown in the IT industry, is expected to register a reversal in fortunes following the September 11 attacks in the US.

Speaking to The Financial Express, Quantum ATL territory manager for Asia-Pacific, Kim Low said the incidents since September 11 have come as a wake-up call for the whole spectrum of industry to install sound disaster management systems.

At present, nearly 70 per cent of the industry does not have any disaster management or back up system. All these companies have now realised the importance of having one and this is going generate new business opportunities for companies like Quantum in the coming days. But Ms Kim Low said it is too soon to predict the volume of growth in the immediate future.

Ms Kim Low was here in connection with the launch of the company’s latest storage systems—P-4000 and P-7000 in the country. The products were launched by the Quantum.ATL, a subsidiary of Quantum Corporation, a leading supplier of intelligent DLTtape automation products for networked computers.

On the prospects of the products in the Indian market, Ms Kim Low said the country offered a huge potential for storage devices and the company would be focusing on telecom, financial services and software service providers.

The global trend is towards a shift from servers and PCs to storage devices and IDC has predicted this segment to show a growth of 60 per cent in the coming years. The same pattern will also happen in India, she added. The prices of Quantum products range from $40,000 to $150,000. Wipro Infotech and Apra Solutions, are the channel partners of the company in India.

The company, which started its business operations in India in 1998, has been growing at the rate of 50 per cent in the last three years. But this year the growth will be flat or 10 to 15 per cent at the most.

“In the first two quarters it was flat, we hope to improve in the next two quarters,” Ms Kim Low said. The global partners of the company include Motorola, Intel, British Airways, Cisco Systems, Bank of America, etc.