IDC Lists Top 10 Predictions

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- In line with last year's predictions, IDC's global storage predictions for 2007 highlight the ongoing evolution of disaster recovery and IT virtualization. Several new topics made IDC's list for 2007, including several predictions related to the growing role of individual consumers and households in shaping the storage industry.

"This year, both the storage and server industries will take steps to bridge the gap between their virtualization solutions," said Richard Villars, vice president of Storage Systems research at IDC. "We expect to see enhancements at multiple levels including SAN drivers, data replication, and integration between server and storage virtualization management platforms."

"Personal storage will become a major storage category, providing new services opportunity around data migration and protection solutions," added Dave Reinsel, director of Storage Systems research at IDC. "Look to leading consumer device and content-centric companies to deliver products and services that meet the increasing needs of consumers and small businesses."

Among IDC's other top 10 storage predictions are the following:

1. Consolidation and securing of information at branch or remote offices becomes a major issue for IT managers2. Consistent, company-wide disaster recovery continues to increase in priority across all regions

3. Explosion in file-based data will drive more investments in file virtualization and clustered file solutions

IDC