IBM Singapore's Integrated Supply Chain (ISC) facility, which passed an important milestone recently when it shipped the company's one millionth Linear Tape- Open (LTO) drive, is expecting to increase headcount by 10-15 per cent in the next two years.
IBM's ISC facility here, established in 1994, serves as a worldwide source for several of IBM's critical storage products.
Speaking to BizIT, Andrew Monshaw, general manager of IBM System Storage, pointed out: 'It is responsible for assembling the entry level products of the Tape Storage Family, namely the Head Actuator Assembly, Linear Tape- Open, Enterprise Drive and the 3580 Tape Drive.'
He added that the manufacturing facility also assembles IBM System Storage DS6000, part of the mid- range Disk Storage Family, and serves as the international Warranty Repair Centre for LTO Tape Drives, shipping to clients from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
'In addition, the Singapore facility serves as the plant of control for other critical storage products manufactured at other sites around the world.'
Mr Monshaw noted that IBM was the No 1 global storage hardware vendor in the world, based on disk plus tape branded revenues combined.
'IBM captured 21.9 per cent of the total global branded disk plus tape revenue share for the third quarter of 2007, besting all other major storage hardware vendors for the quarter,' he added.
Quoting IDC, Mr Monshaw noted that IBM's external disk storage revenue in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) for fiscal 2007 accounts for 18 per cent of IBM's worldwide external disk storage revenue business in 2007.
The ISC facility here is a vital resource for the company in APEJ. IBM has around 800 people in Singapore working specifically in storage production and out of that 350 work specifically in the LTO operations.
Mr Monshaw said IBM has plans to increase the ISC headcount by 10-15 per cent over the next two years.
Since 2000, IBM has been an industry leader in shipping LTO drives to customers, and is the leader in tape drive shipments of the latest fourth-generation LTO technology, which includes built-in hardware encryption to help users address data security initiatives, the IBM official noted. He added the Singapore facility has contributed to IBM's leadership position.
'IBM's LTO offerings and its entire System Storage products are an important part of the company's information infrastructure strategy - helping clients manage and use information effectively,' he noted.
This strategy maps directly to IBM's new enterprise data centre model, which helps clients improve IT efficiency and facilitates the rapid deployment of new IT services for future business growth, Mr Monshaw added.
'The new model is based on best practices for virtualisation, green IT, service management and cloud computing.'
He said when most people think of LTO they think it's for data archiving, 'data that was backed up and put in some off-site location, never to be seen again'.
However, 'what people don't realise is that many of the new applications require this infrastructure, which is portable and usable'.
For example,digital video surveillance requires that you have portability of the information but also that it can be stored for a long time, and that it's available when needed and that it does not need to be available all the time.
'LTO is a technology that can be in a shutdown phase when you're not using it, and be in a usable phase when you need it.'
This technology is winning in a number of applications, for example car video surveillance capabilities.
It's the technology for the next generation, but this is not well understood, he added.
Mr Monshaw said IBM is seeing a double-digit growth in the LTO business.
The IBM official said the ISC facility here hit a million drives in seven years and production is well above a couple of hundred thousands. 'We are into our fourth generation (of LTO) and the technology has morphed to fit different market segments.'
The tape division accounts for about 20 per cent of IBM's total storage business which Mr Monshaw described as having a turnover 'in the high single digit billions'.
Mr Monshaw, however, noted that clients don't generally buy tapes, instead they buy solutions. 'Tapes go into libraries and clients buy libraries and then they want to upgrade to put more drives in the libraries.'
This makes up the 'tape infrastructure', in front of which sits that software layer.
'So this solution is rather broad - some clients buy upgrades, some just buy libraries, some buy additional robotics and some just media.'
He observed that the storage landscape is changing globally and businesses are demanding that the management and storage of data must be done better, cheaper and faster. Very simply, they want information on demand, he noted.
'Whether it be financial transaction data, adhering to compliance requirements, e-mail storage - or entirely new Web 2.0 storage technologies for digital images and digital media and healthcare, clients across the globe are being forced to retain and manage and access more data and for longer periods of time.'
He noted that businesses are increasing their storage capacity by 30-50 per cent annually, according to Forrester Research.
'IBM's goal is to provide the leading technologies and solutions at every layer of the data centre - storage, servers, software and services - to address these new realities IT customers face,' Mr Monshaw said.
This article was first published in The Business Times on Jun 9, 2008
