Top Storage Predictions for 2007

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

Like Macbeth's witches, we have our eye on the future. But we're not looking for bubbles or trouble. (Toil is a given.) Instead, it's the storage networking market we're gazing at, and we see some key themes materializing.

As ever, feel free to disagree. That's what message boards are for! (At least in part.) Without further ado, here are our key predictions for 2007:

Storage will grow its own HPC segment. As noted in our look at key markets for 2007, ongoing developments in high-performance computing (HPC) are spawning new types of storage gear that break current ceilings of size and speed. (See Top 10 Storage Markets to Watch.)

This trend builds on the link between HPC and storage, typified by projects such as the multimillion-dollar Department of Energy and Los Alamos investigations into high-performance storage. (See DOE Launches Storage Effort and Los Alamos Picks Panasas.) The goal is to put principles that have worked for HPC into storage products capable of serving high-end users in financial services, manufacturing, and related storage-greedy markets."We believe that there has been a lot of work done on the compute side, but there's a strong need for storage to support [that]," said HDS CEO Dave Roberson, announcing his company's investment in BlueArc, a move spurred by the need for bigger storage. (See HDS, BlueArc in Big NAS Deal.)

The "high performance storage" trend will see an expanded role for NAS and iSCSI technologies, and for hybrid gear that combines SAN and NAS. Over one-third of 239 respondents to our recent blog on the HDS/BlueArc deal said high-performance NAS couldn't come soon enough. (See HDS & BlueArc and HDS, BlueArc in Big NAS Deal.) NAS and iSCSI also leverage Ethernet, the preferred connector for HPC networks. (See Ethernet Enlarges Supercomputing.)

Data classification and search tools will proliferate. We all know about the growing need to organize massive amounts of data and make it accessible. Check with your corporate attorneys if you're not sure what's going on. (See Discovering E-Discovery.) And while the past year revealed that several technologies will be required to get the job done, the coming year will see more integration.

We can already see closer ties between data classifiers and search engines. (See Classifiers Grab Search Partners.) That will continue. We'll also see a closer link between data classification/search and storage platforms. NetApp's OEM deal with Kazeon and EMC's arrangement with FAST are typical examples. (See NetApp Augments Kazeon-Based App.)

The year may also see fresh efforts to create underlying indexing standards, although we're skeptical about seeing any real results. (See A Call for Common Indexing.) This is just too good an opportunity for big vendors to cede even a bit of their cherished lock-in to "open standards."Services will surge. Managed storage services have been steadily rising, and we expect that to continue. In fact, we'll go out on a limb here and predict that 2007 will see storage as a focal point for managed services.

This isn't to say we'll see any resurgence of the old-time "storage service provider," which specialized in SAN extension. Instead, the kinds of services on the rise include online backup, email hosting, and disaster recovery. (See Managed Storage Moves On and Email Gets More Outsourced Options.) Indeed, a quiet shakeout appears to be underway with regard to what works and what doesn't when it comes to services. (See CentrePath's Fate May Be Sealed.)

Many storage services will be included in overall enterprise service packages from big carriers. Some will grow out of lucrative metro network services, including Ethernet ones. Watch for companies like AT&T/BellSouth -- which both have storage services in their lineups -- to grow their offerings while attempting to introduce differentiators in pricing and manageability.

Data protection will become a focal point for storage networking. The term data protection is far from meaningless. It encompasses a range of issues in a way that reflects how customers are really using storage equipment, software, and services. It includes backup, archiving, or compliance, but it also extends to security issues like encryption, disaster recovery, and the human factor. (See VA Reports Massive Data Theft and Portable Problems Prompt IT Spending.)

Data protection has been a factor in recent M&A activity. (See EMC Secures RSA for $2.1B, NetApp Grabs Topio, and Symantec Swallows Revivio.) And we think that's going to keep happening. What's more, data protection will start encompassing other techniques, like wide area file services, de-duplication, and virtual tape libraries.SRM will grow, but not "federate". Storage resource management is going to be key to ensuring the effectiveness of all storage management systems and software. And we fully expect individual systems to not only improve, but groove in the coming year. Web interfaces, ease-of-use features, configuration and accounting offshoots will likely emerge, as vendors seek to differentiate their storage wares.

Do not mistake any of this for a heterogeneous storage management platform. As ever, SRM will remain homogeneous, geared to specific vendors' wares. (See Storage Left Out of CMDB Loop.) Despite what proponents of SNIA maintain, the vision of multivendor management is not a realistic one for storage, given that most vendors are invested so heavily in their particular hardware fiefdoms.

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Backup buzzwords will be gone. Continuous data protection (CDP) and data de-duplication will go away in 2007, and virtual tape libraries (VTLs) will take a step towards the door. More accurately, the buzzwords will disappear, because the technologies they represent will finally be integrated into overall backup products, as they should be.

That process accelerated last year when backup software leaders Symantec and EMC made a push into disk-based technologies. Symantec rolled out its first-generation de-duplication PureDisk product and acquired startup Revivio's intellectual property to accelerate its CDP platform. (See Symantec Dips Into De-Dupe and Symantec Swallows Revivio.) EMC acquired its own CDP (Kashya) and data de-duplication (Avamar) startups, and you can expect those technologies to be part of the Legato platform. (See EMC Coughs Up for Kashya and EMC Picks Up Avamar.)The trend didn't start in 2006 -- Asigra incorporates de-duplication and CDP in its backup software, and CommVault has CDP built into its backup application, with de-duplication on the way. But as is usually the case, the big boys will drive the trend a lot faster than smaller competitors.

As for virtual tape, Symantec's NetBackup OpenStorage API program unveiled in November could eventually render VTL as we know it today obsolete, forcing traditional VTL vendors to expand their capabilities to do more than just emulate tape. (See 2001: Memorable Moments.)

Cisco and Microsoft will intensify their battle for remote control. The significance of extending IT capabilities to remote offices got everybody's attention in 2006. In storage, this helped fuel the emergence of WAFS vendor Riverbed and drive interest in data de-duplication. (See Riverbed Flows Toward Breakeven.)

But that was just a warmup. The game starts for real in 2007, when Cisco and Microsoft step up their battle to control remote offices. Cisco already has millions of its Integrated Storage Routers (ISRs) in remote offices and Microsoft owns the remote office operating system and business applications space.

The need for storage capabilities in branch and remote offices brings Cisco and Microsoft into competition. Until now, the two have been arming for the fight. Cisco acquired Actona for WAFS and FineGround for WAN acceleration. It finally combined them in its Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) release in September. (See Cisco Backs Into Optimization.) Microsoft forged a partnership with Citrix for WAN optimiziation last year to go with a WAFS partnership with Packeteer. (See Citrix Widens WAN Strategy.) Microsoft expects appliances from the Citrix deal this year. Other big players will try to expand in remote offices too, especially backup vendors Symantec, EMC, and IBM.Email will go to the archives. The headache that IT folks can't shake entering 2007 isn't a New Year's hangover, it's the lingering issue of what to do about email archiving. One of the easiest decisions IT will make this year will be to archive all email. (See Email Archiving to Grow.) One of the hardest will be how to do it.

By now, it should be clear that email must be kept safe and made available for quick and easy retrieval. (See Energizing Exchange.) Email is a business critical application, used as a repository for spreadsheets, PDFs, unstructured text files, and even videos. Its also a prime target of regulators and lawyers for compliance issues and tends to grow extremely fast, stressing network storage systems. (See FRCP Tip Sheet and Brokerage Firm Zips Through Email.)

There’s certainly no shortage of products and services, which is why the issue of how to archive is such a tough decision. (See Insider: Email Archiving Hits Bottom.) There are backup software applications with archiving built in; products that take a technology such as CDP and apply it specifically to email; applications built specifically to search and classify for ediscovery; managed services to handle the entire email store; and services for pieces of email. (See Email Gets More Outsourced Options and Outsourcing Email Not an Easy Choice.

Then there's a new version of Microsoft Exchange -- Exchange 2007 -- to deal with. (See Users Cautious on Microsoft Upgrades.) Because there is little time to spare due to the mission-critical aspect of email archiving, this is a topic certain to gain a lot of attention in early 2007. By the end of the year, we expect nearly all large firms will have their email safely tucked away in a readily accessible archive somewhere, or at least be in the process. Then everyone can give instant messaging the full attention it also needs. (See IM: Increasing Menace.)

Paper won't disappear, but it will diminish. When EMC bought content management firm Documentum in 2003, the deal was considered outside of EMC's core storage domain. But now content management is playing a big role in storage, due to the expansion of electronic records to more applications and a move to getting records off paper and into electronic form. (See Content Capture Considered.)Sure, people have been predicting the paperless office for years and we're still killing trees, but content management applications, systems, and services help companies eliminate mountains of paper -- for a price. (See Trio Tests VOIP & Data.)

With compliance a key issue in today's business world and industries such as healthcare facing a demand for rapid storing and retrieval of records, we expect to see a big increase in large-scale initiatives to reduce paper records. EMC has expanded its content management through acquisition and by widening support for more applications, IBM dropped $1.6 billion on FileNet last year to increase its document management capabilities. What's more, large service firms are already cashing in to the paperless tune of billions of dollars a year. (See Documentum Puts on a Microsoft Face, IBM Nets FileNet for $1.6B, and Getting Records Management Right.)

Virtualization: Hot and getting hotter. No news flash there where virtualization is concerned -- and a whole lot more for server virtualization than for storage.

Storage virtualization remains a hard sell. But server virtualization is a juggernaut, one that might be called the S.S. VMware. Did EMC know something no one else did when it acquired the company two years ago, or did it just get lucky with the billions it's thrown around? It almost doesn't matter -- the vendor will continue to dominate the server virtualization market.

Lots of other interests are trying to muscle in on the v-action, and such is VMware's dominance that it makes it difficult to predict how this will all gin out. All sorts of open-source virtualization products are popping up, and it's unclear whether customers view them as viable for something as critical as the corporate data center.How Microsoft maneuvers this maze in the coming year will also be huge. While the vendor has knuckled down for this month's debut of the Vista desktop operating system, Longhorn Server or Windows Server 2008, is expected to ship later this year. Will Virtual Server 2005 R2 remain its major virtualization vehicle?

One-time server titan Sun Microsystems has yet to gain much traction in the virtualization, or is too distracted with other operations issues to trumpet any successes it's had there. HP and IBM will continue to be formidable competitors here, and partnerships (most likely with VMware) will be key.

It's been unnaturally quiet on the storage virtualization front for the last several months, and that's unlikely to change, barring some price slashing on the exorbitant software, or an uncharacteristic moment of vendor clarity that makes a slam-dunk business case for the upgrade. At this point, it feels like Godot will arrive long before any kind of storage virtualization interoperability does.

— The Editors, Byte and Switch