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The Advisor takes an indepth look into what options are available for regional companies looking to update their IT storage capabilities.

As small and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) save more data and rely on it more, they are turning to networked storage despite the burden of limited budgets and IT expertise.

Across verticals there is a continuous increase in the amount of relevant business information that needs to be processed and stored.

Some of the data needs to be stored for daily retrieval or as long-term records, some storage provides one of the core functions of any SME, that of information retention and retrieval.

According to industry estimates, the SME storage market is pegged around US$5bn worldwide and estimates the growth at close to 13%, with the commercial segment at 11% and the large enterprise and corporate sectors growing at only around 5%.

Of this storage pie, the Middle East SME storage market is as high as 75% to 80% and is expected to expand over the next three-to-five years.

A quick look at certain sectors show that the following have accelerated growth levels and are poised to continue over the next few years:

• Content Depots, like Flickr, YouTube and Google will consume 25 times as much storage space by 2010 as they do now.

• Media/ TV: 1000% growth a year due to digitising of the archive and archiving of current and coming content.

• Banking: Requirements to keep track of financial transactions and records, as well as compliance (Basel II, MiFID, etc.).

Kevin Vine, EMEA Manager Buffalo Technologies, said, "In the Middle East, like the rest of EMEA, the market for personal data storage has grown enormously and this need is pushing for larger capacities and faster data transfer rates."

Independent analyst group, IDC, has said that the Middle East is on the verge of a data boom, and most regional organisations are not prepared.

Software investment in the Middle East remains strong, but only leads to the generation of more data which, in turn, must be backed-up and retrieved for immediate reference in the region's fast moving organisations.

Oil and gas conglomerates, retail, banks, governments, and telcos are all investing significantly in software applications to manage their growing customer base.

Fiona Moon, CommVault Marketing Director stated: "Data growth in the Middle East is progressing faster than most emerging markets, and we believe that this trend will continue."

IDC's view that the region is on the verge of a data boom fully supports our existing position that regional organisations should be moving now to establish a clearly defined storage investment policy the places crucial importance on leading-edge back-up and recovery technologies.

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