Data Storage Vendors Tout Green Solutions

August 2, 2007

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How much being green can help storage vendors boost sales is a much-debated question, Investor’s Business Daily reports. A storage vendor that proves it’s more green than others can gain a couple percentage points of market share, said Brad Nisbet, an analyst with research firm IDC, but not much more.

The degree of green won’t have a big impact on buying decisions, says Simon Robinson, an analyst with the 451 Group, a research firm. “It’s going to be a check-box feature,” he said. “Customers are going to want to see it.”

One green storage technology is “thin provisioning” software that addresses the problem of disk space not being fully used. HP, Network Appliance and EMC offer thin provisioning.

Besides disk-based storage, where boxes are always plugged in and using some power, HP last month unveiled some tape-based storage as a power-saving measure. Once a tape is full, companies can store a tape.

Data de-duplication, which saves disk space by only backing up unique files is another way to go green. Many vendors, including EMC and Network Appliance, offer de-duplication.

Perhaps the purest of the green storage offerings, according to the article, are products that use MAID, which helps use less power by slowing the spinning speed of disks while they aren’t being accessed for data retrieval.

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