This IDC study, which is a translation of the Japan report divides the storage services market into four segments, namely, consulting, installation and integration, management and operation, and maintenance services and analyzes the market performance in 2005 (actual) and 2006-2010 (forecast). IDC also classifies storage service vendors into three groups based on business form, namely, IT vendors, storage hardware/software vendors, and independent systems integrators (SIs) and analyzes their business trends. The storage service businesses of the major vendors are also summarized in this study.

"The amount of data retained by Japan companies will continue to increase. Along with compliance needs, the demand for centralized data management services will also rise. At present, various solutions and technologies exist to help users manage information securely and effectively. These solutions/technologies are becoming increasingly sophisticated and in order to gain full mileage, the expertise of storage engineers is called for. Centralized data management renders storage operations more critical to corporate missions and at the same time, may also lead to performance bottlenecks. In storage maintenance management, the importance of not only vital sign monitoring but also service-level monitoring is growing. Such services will, therefore, become increasingly sophisticated in the future," says Yasusuke Suzuki, research manager, Storage Systems Research, IDC Japan.