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The Future of Storage

by:- Farid J. Neema - President of Peripheral Concepts, Inc

The future of storage networking is contingent upon the evolution of SAN and NAS architectures, the distribution model for storage, and the advances in telecommunications techniques. These in turn will create new applications demanding higher levels of performance, very scalable interoperable systems, and universal data access. Storage beyond 2003 will inter-operate with the rest of the IT and IP environment

SAN and NAS Architectures

The frontiers of SAN and NAS are rapidly growing and evolving making it increasingly difficult to identify separate markets. Ultimately, much of the differing functionality of the two architectures will merge. NAS will find a way to overcome the slow nature of TCP, and take advantage of the higher Ethernet speeds, as NAS appliances scale and layer in additional software functionality SAN will overcome its interoperability problems, will incorporate both caching and heterogeneous data sharing, while moving to easy-to-install, low-cost products. The road to NAS and SAN convergence will go through some "SAN over IP" solution

The exact outcome of SAN and NAS merger is not clear at this point. The most likely outcome is that FC prevails in the mid-term for the metropolitan area, a SAN file system emerges as a standard, and bridges are built to either encapsulate FC (or SCSI) over IP or to translate FC into IP for WAN connections. IP protocol will prevail in the long term with the advent of 10-gigabit Ethernet, its advantages override FC merits, and many SAN products will be implemented based on IP.

Just like in any major new development, there won't be one technology that fits everyone's needs. There will be complementary technologies that address different market segments. The proper solution will likely differ by application, connectivity requirements, scalability, performance, and price sensitivity. Fibre Channel SAN has acquired enough momentum to ensure its continued high acceptance rate for the next three to five years. For any architecture to be successful, it will have to guarantee continuity/ integration with Fibre channel.

Storage Distribution

The profile of distribution channels is changing, driven by service providers. Service providers represent a very significant discontinuity in the way storage is distributed and the way vendors interact with their users and channels. They will constitute a great market opportunity and create a new business model for storage. A data tone model will prevail. Storage will be provided as a utility by service providers, except for larger corporations that will be very reluctant to give away all of their data to someone else to manage. To succeed, a VAR will need to offer a complete solution and service.

Applications

The Internet revolution is causing businesses to rethink every interaction with customers, suppliers and partners. While the Internet is merely the trigger, the real effect lies in the better use of corporate information, leading to broader market reach and additional business. Corporations will aggressively invest in the development of more efficient and optimized IT infrastructures to leverage new and existing data. Mobile business, consumer retail purchase, entertainment, combined with multi-media support, will drive the creation of an infrastructure where content is independent of the data format and the storage location. In such an environment, data security will grow to a become a vital necessity.

Industry and Industry Leaders

The storage leader in year 2003-2005 will:

• Provide reliable, scalable solution to open storage that is easily managed

• Stay closest to his customers

• Execute in a timely way

• Offer a high Quality of Service

• Have very high software, system and network skills

Industry consolidation will continue, many storage vendors will disappear, and a new breed of companies will emerge as storage leaders.

click to see STORAGEsearch's predictions for the 10 biggest storage companies in 2003...