Score One For The Little Guy

Solution providers are quick to point out, however, that iSCSI has been moving into the small-business market on its own merits, with that move picking up momentum as customers' data storage needs continue to evolve and they continue to adopt server virtualization.

"It's pretty exciting," said Eryck Bredy, founder and CTO of BNMC Corp., an Andover, Mass.-based small-business solution provider and consultant. "With iSCSI, the small fries are finally getting the storage abilities enjoyed by the large companies for so long."

The storage market is in the midst of a boom in demand for storage products based on iSCSI, which is a storage protocol that allows servers to access SCSI-based devices over an IP network as if they were directly attached to the servers.

IDC, the Framingham, Mass.-based consulting firm, estimates that worldwide revenue for iSCSI SANs will reach $5.7 billion in 2011, up from $920 million in 2007.

Benjamin Woo, a former solution provider and currently a research vice president for enterprise storage systems at IDC, said he expects Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic to make it easier for everybody to bring iSCSI to small businesses.

"People all of a sudden are waking up and seeing that network storage works good," Woo said. "They couldn't afford Fibre Channel. But now they're seeing they can do it with iSCSI."

The key driver going forward will be server virtualization, Bredy said. Server virtualization requires that customers have a SAN in order to migrate and protect virtual servers. And for small businesses, iSCSI is the right solution, he added.

"I like to talk about the 'Zero-U' SAN," he said. "It's a SAN, but it doesn't take any space. A virtual SAN. It has fascinating potential. You need a SAN for server virtualization, and with iSCSI you can now build it out of nothing using software from companies like DataCore [Software Corp., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.]."

Woo said he expects server virtualization to be the "killer app" for iSCSI. "We can do quality of service on a virtual machine, but not with Fibre Channel without some add-ons," he said. "But with Ethernet, we can look at the quality of service of a virtual machine."

For now, the key driver of iSCSI storage growth—especially in small businesses—is the relatively low cost to build a SAN when compared to the main alternative technology, Fibre Channel.

Next: The Myth OF Fibre Channel