Storage Trends Emerge as Fall Shows Get Underway: Page 2 of 3

• File systems are scaling. Here's a prediction: 2008 will be the year of the gargantuan NAS. Enterprises are glomming onto the concept of shared file systems that link to modular storage. Examples include "grid storage" announcements from NEC and Parascale, as well as enhanced NAS gateways from ONStor and SGI. Expect more from this quarter in the weeks ahead.
• De-duplication will be a partners' game. It's tough to create de-duplication, but users are keen to have it. What's more, there's growing evidence that there's no one way to do it right. Therefore, storage suppliers who can't afford to acquire the technology or develop it themselves are going to seek partners. Pillar's choice to certify de-dupe vendors and resell others, unveiled this week, appears to be just the first of a series.

  "We will add de-dupe, yes. We're getting ready to announce certifications with a number of different companies," says ONStor CEO Bob Miller. "We are not doing it ourselves."

• SRM is gaining new ground. It's no surprise to see fresh focus on tools that enable storage managers to get better control of increasingly important assets. Monosphere, for instance, is extending its capacity management software to work with HDS arrays. Monosphere tracks and forecasts the disk usage of specific applications. Up to now, the vendor has supported EMC systems and NetApp filers. According to VP of marketing Frank Kettenstock, compatibility with HP and IBM arrays is coming "soon."

  Other vendors have similar tools, including Akorri, AppIQ, and Symantec. And there's no slowdown in management applications for other aspects of storage. (See Backup Reporting Tools Become DPM.) Before the end of the year, we expect to see further activity in this space.

Bottom line? As the end of the year approaches, these and other trends will be evident, particularly in coming confabs. As ever, we'll be there to follow the trail and report what we find.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.