As online storage keeps getting cheaper, tape backup solutions become less appealing because of the time required to recover from tape and the sequential nature of tape storage. Plus, the cost per gigabyte of tape storage is staying relatively constant, while the cost per gigabyte of hard drives keeps dropping. As connectivity's cost decreases and its reliability increases, more companies will consider consolidating storage in the data center. Web applications and data warehousing systems both contribute to the consolidation trend.

Large companies are also beginning to recognize that heterogeneous system support for storage is mandatory. As corporations deploy storage area networks (SANs) in their data centers, they're looking for solutions that support data storage from Unix, mainframe operating systems, and Windows-based systems on the same SAN. EMC has always excelled in this area.

EMC was built on the premise that companies want to consolidate enterprise storage. Unfortunately, it was also built on the premise that corporations would always have to pay a premium to get the benefits of storage consolidation.

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When companies like Dell enter the market in full force later this year (Dell is actually using EMC technology to create its own devices to compete with EMC), the cost per gigabyte of enterprise storage will decrease for everyone. Even companies like Cisco--traditionally a communications company--are looking at the enterprise storage market as a potential source of new revenue.

In fact, EMC technically isn't even the top dog anymore--HP/Compaq is. With its recent acquisition of Compaq, HP is now the top provider of storage solutions in the industry with a 25 percent market share versus 17 percent for EMC. Of course, what all the players in the storage market must figure out is how to move from the commodity hardware business into the business of providing management software for disparate SANs.

The future is software
Most companies don't have the luxury of a homogenous processing environment today, and the same applies for data storage devices. Most data centers have multiple vendors for storage devices. The challenge is to make these devices look like a single storage pool that any of several systems can allocate from.

EMC is working to extend its existing management software to work with competitors' storage products. Unisys just released a new storage management software product, called Storage Sentinel, that works with storage arrays from EMC, IBM, Hitachi, and HP and that supports Windows-, Linux-, and Solaris-based servers. Although it's not a Unisys-only solution since it includes other vendors' components, products like Storage Sentinel go a long way toward solving the storage management issues faced by data centers.

As you develop and create your storage strategy, you need to realize that storage solutions are following a path similar to that of the personal computer. As the cost of the hardware declines, the cost of the software and personnel to maintain and manage it becomes much larger.

What's on your company's storage shopping list for the next year? TalkBack below or e-mail us with your thoughts.
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