SAN Market to Reach $17.9 Billion by 2026

The global market for SAN is forecast to reach $17.9 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 2.5% from 2021 to 2026, according to analyst firm IndustryARC in a $4.500 report entitled SAN market – Forecast (2021-2026).

The market growth is attributed to the factors such as growing deployment of cloud-based DAS system, rising growth of technologies such as IoT, AI and others along with providing increased work productivity across different industries. Moreover, growing investments from various sectors towards infrastructure development are also booming the market growth. 

One of the major factors of using SAN is centralized backup. In centralized backup servers, user have backup in the main server and will be able to view stored data on local disks. Few additional features of this NAS are storage virtualization, clustered file system and dynamic failover protection. Moreover, easy availability and increase in I/O performance with increase in number of interconnected devices make server service area network an efficient system. 

Globally advancement of technology and business operations, and low upgradation cost are the prime growth drivers of SAN market. However, deployment issues owing to complicated integration is a key restraint for SAN market.

Key takeaways
• With large industries facing problems for storing their massive amounts of data, deployments on data centres can help them majorly in successfully managing sensitive company information systematically.
• North American region dominated the global SAN market in 2020 owing to the presence of advanced technologies, large number of manufacturers and the increasing business demands for SAN.

By technology type
SAN market is segmented into FC, FCoE, IB, iSCSI protocol, others on the basis of technology. The market of FCoE is anticipated to hold the highest market growth during the forecast period 2021-2026 at 4.4% CAGR. FCoE makes an adaptive strategy to I/O consolidation by retaining all FC constructions, keeping the bandwidth, protection and traffic control characteristics of FC while keeping investments in FC resources, training and SANs. 

Centred on a lossless, secure Ethernet, FCoE networks integrate LAN and multiple storage protocols over a converging network. FCoE thus decreases the number of I/O adapters, connectors and switches in the data centre when configured as an access layer integration solution.

By organisation size
Large enterprises is anticipated to witness the significant market growth during the forecast period 2021-2026 at 3.5% CAGR. The market growth is owing to the benefits that users deploy including faster backups, improved scalability, clustered file storage increased data security and others. Local area network-based NAS networks are often subject to bandwidth limitations, which minimise efficiency and increase the time it takes to complete basic tasks and transfers. If the SAN takes away a significant portion of your network traffic, the burden on your LAN’s bandwidth decreases. 

Data security is of utmost importance to any company. With SAN, data security algorithms remain reliable, meaning users have access to correct copies of any data whenever possible. SAN has all the right functionality to be the option for data centres. There are several good arguments to use SAN instead of other alternative storage options in a data centre. It is reliable, fail-safe, fast, and even requires less power to run. So, that will be a complement to the major data centres of the organisations. The clusters are working with SAN, and the master application operates at the same time as workload juggling. This configuration is usually used for business-critical applications such as banking systems that generate lucrative opportunities for existing players in the SAN market.

By geography
North America held the highest market share in 2020 at 37%. Market growth is attributed to factors such as technological advances, increased demand for energy-efficient appliances and increased demand for high-speed connectivity in the area. The region also has a well-established infrastructure which allows easy implementation of advanced technologies and provides better connectivity. 

North America, which has prominently taken the lead on various technological developments such as smart homes, smart cities, IoT, big data and consumer electronics, has emerged as the nucleus for SAN market demand. Market for SAN solutions is expected to grow in Europe, AsiaPac, as a number of organisations are rising around these areas, such as the technology adoption. 

The SAN solutions market between these regions is expected to expand in AsiaPac. AsiaPac is projected to remain at the forefront of the SAN industry, offering growth opportunities to market participants. Players in the area concentrate on providing real-time access to storage provided by a cluster of nodes, a high-speed platform with several hosts, and an intelligent SAN storage system. With the growing focus of SAN service providers on building a large market presence, a large rise in IT investment by businesses across sectors boosts market growth.

SAN market drivers: technological advancements
With rapid technological growth, there is rise of structured as well as unstructured data in the market. Large enterprises as well as small scale businesses both require a flexible storage management system to store their huge amounts of data securely. Rising technological advancements such as adoption of cloud, IoT and others are contributing towards higher growth of SAN market. Moreover, rapid adoption of such advanced technologies for creating a reliable and comparatively more cost efficient storage management has been helping the mid-size industries for enhancement of the business thereby impacting the market growth.

Implementation of FCoE
The new implementation of support for FCoE with 10GBASE-T infrastructure allows data centres to offer lightweight physical cabling while adopting either protocol at a much lower cost. FCoE software reduces necessity for parallel networking and storage networks, minimising costs and complexities. While FCoE is yet to become the cornerstone, its capacity to seamlessly communicate with established FC SANs will in the near future widen its functionality capability.

The new implementation of support for FCoE with 10GBASE-T infrastructure allows data centres to offer lightweight physical cabling while adopting either protocol at a lower cost. FCoE software reduces necessity for parallel networking and storage networks, minimising costs and complexities. While FCoE is yet to become the cornerstone, its capacity to seamlessly communicate with established FC SANs will in the near future widen its functionality capability.