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Peace Out

Five years is a long time when it comes to technology. So it's no surprise that as I write this, my final blog as site editor of Byte and Switch, I contemplate a world of storage quite changed from its state in 2003.

Late that year, EMC, having just digested Documentum, gobbled VMware for a mere $635 million in cash and stock, which would one day contrast nicely with the whopping $1.7 billion VMware's IPO brought four years later.

Elsewhere, little startup Data Domain had just gotten funding for its ATA-based "recovery appliance." McData and Brocade were still distinct entities (the 2006 sale wouldn't actually close until early 2007). Sun had not yet bought StorageTek. Cisco was just about to buy Andiamo, the spin-in that developed its MDS 9000 series switches.

On the other hand, a lot has stayed the same over the years: EMC is still the 800-pound gorilla; Sun is still struggling; tape persists; IP SANs continue to spread but haven't killed Fibre Channel; compliance is still an issue.

Indeed, there's still common ground between the top trends we identified at the start of 2004 and those we picked at the start of this year:

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