Bangalore: President of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), Kiran Karnik, said on January 21 storage networking segment offered upwards of one billion USD business opportunity for Indian companies and exhorted them to seize the initiative.

Speaking at a Storage Networking Summit in Bangalore, Karnik said storage networking is a crucial area and one of great possibilities and opportunities, as companies around the world are looking at disaster recovery and driving costs down.

Highlighting the importance of storage networking, President of the Confederation of Indian Industry, Ashok Soota, said there is a huge need for business continuity in view of rise of terrorism.

Soota urged Indian companies to leverage their expertise in IT services to foray into data management services and data mining area in a big way.

The four-day summit, comprising a global conference and expo, was originally scheduled to be held in September 2002 but because of US travel advisories in the wake of mounting tension between India and Pakistan, it was postponed.

The four-day Summit, the world's leading event connected to network storage and being held for the first time in India, is being attended by over 400 persons from the country's leading IT companies and enterprises.

The Summit's Director Brenda Christensen said the event offered an opportunity for the Indian IT community to get latest updates on the storage networking scenario.

PTI