Modern workplaces need more space - and lots of it. Not for new desks or meeting rooms or coffee machines, but for data storage. The vast amounts of e-mails, documents, graphics, multimedia files and applications that run a business - and the multiple backups required - create a need for ever more increasing amounts of disc space. Companies big and small are investing in data-storage solutions that include both storage facilities and people who can manage the data efficiently.
'Every day, companies are storing more data. Even though economies around the world are having difficulties, we are still seeing the storage industry grow,' says Andrew Sampson, vice-president of managed services for Asia-Pacific, and general manager for Hong Kong and Macau at Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).
To deal with the massive amounts of data businesses produce every day, HDS provides managed services to clients on the infrastructure level. Its main objective is to help manage clients' storage on a pay-per-use basis.
'We manage their data in their data centre, or someone else's data centre, and we only charge them for what they use,' Sampson says. 'We are seeing more and more customers use managed services.'
One of the reasons behind the strong growth in the data-storage industry is new regulations. Sampson says many financial-services and health-care companies are not allowed to delete their data, under government law. 'We are creating more data and not removing it,' he says.
HDS was named one of Fortune magazine's '100 Best Companies to Work For' this year. It is now looking for data-storage engineers as a result of the industry's rapid growth.
Engineers are classified in terms of pre-sales and post-sales. Pre-sales engineers are architects and designers who work with customers to develop a storage architecture that meets their requirements.