Storage Takes Center Stage

Once upon a time, storage was the lackluster stepchild of data center technologies. Even IT pros asked how anyone could be interested in such an arcane but, well, unexciting science.

How indeed! Some short years later, storage is among the hottest technologies going. Ask any investment banker or venture capitalist what's on the "must have" list these days, and storage startups feature prominently.

Storage has finally, it seems, broken free of old perceptions. It's a vehicle not just for saving data but improving it, and storage rides high in the revenue reports of any company with an enterprise focus. (See Storage Shines for HP and NetApp: 'We're Winning'.)

Storage has made it to Hollywood, where demand for digital processing has ITers on the cutting edge of SAN deployment. Ask Andy Tran, chief technical officer at Pacific Title and Art Studio, whose systems are currently being used on the sixth Rocky movie. (Talk about challenges: For this movie, artists must make 60-year-old Sly Stallone look like a real heavyweight boxer.) (See Pacific Title & Art Studio.)

Storage is also hip with the gaming industry, where flexible, high-capacity arrays are crucial to rendering, the animation technique that creates digital dreamworlds for video enthusiasts who pay close attention to pixilated details. (See Gaming Companies Eye Storage.)The once-boring "S" technology isn't just making it in new-fangled applications. It is broadening to incorporate data intelligence, digital forensics, and other innovations in business, education, and healthcare. An indicator of growing interest can be seen in the volatility of the storage market, where mergers, acquisitions, and funding proceed at a lively clip. (See Riverbed Hedges IPO Bet, Isilon, PolyServe Pick Up Funding, and Paragon Pulls In $12.5M Series D.)

It's an atmosphere full of surprises. Who would have predicted that the Fibre Channel switch market, for instance, would become a two-horse race this year, or that Cisco would aim to repeat its history of successful storage spin-ins? (See Users Ponder Life Under Brocade and Andiamo Crew Reunites With Cisco.)

And we haven't even gotten to the rumors that swirl weekly some of which are bested by the actual news.

Allow me two pertinent plugs here:

— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch