The world produces between 1 and 2 exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 megabytes for every man, woman and child on earth. An exabyte is a billion gigabytes. Printed documents of all kinds comprise only .003% of the total. Magnetic storage is by far the largest medium for storing information and is the most rapidly growing, with shipped hard drive capacity doubling every year.

The reseller opportunity for storage solutions is immense. Growth in revenue from sales of disc storage, is stronger during 2004 than for years (Source IDC). Worldwide factory revenues for external disc storage systems have now grown by 8.4% year on year to $3.4 Billion during
the fourth quarter of 2003.

However it is only by understanding your customers business issues that you will be able to help them deploy solutions that suit their needs. Working with ETC we can help you identify these opportunities and deliver significant business benefits.

Cost Reduction

Only when resources are brought under control and managed can shared storage deliver cost reduction across the network. By implementing a storage strategy, organisations can reap the benefits of reduced IT costs and improved use
of IT resources.

Improved Control

Centralised storage solutions (SAN’s) offer greater organisational control and reduce network traffic whilst network attached storage can offer localised control for file sharing. As more storage devices are added to a SAN, they
too will be accessible from any server in the larger network. In this case, the server merely acts as a pathway between the end user and the stored data. Because stored data does not reside directly on any of a network's servers, server power is utilised for business applications, and network capacity is released to the end user.

Information Lifecycle Management

Storage solutions allow for cradle to grave data
management. Policy driven routines enable automated data archiving and so reduce the need for excessive storage devices that require IT support and enable organisations to achieve greater ROI on IT spend.