Any room at the digital inn?

As storage area networks barge their way into corporate data centres, IT officers should keep a keen eye on other options for liberating their digital assets. Scott McCulloch reports.

Some laws are irrefutable. One emerging decree, an odds-on favourite for enshrinement, is that corporate data will inevitably expand to fill all space available for storage.

Yet storage itself, as IT directors will tell you, is not the problem. Managing it is.

Storage capacity is increasing at a blistering pace, but only just ahead of surging demand.

The problem is that increasing capacity and the accompanying fall in the cost of storage is now of little benefit to companies struggling with the headache of how to control and protect mountains of data, while simultaneously giving users timely access and the ability to manipulate it.

If storage is one of the few sectors of IT to have grown during the downturn, then storage area networks (SANs) are the growth engine.

The storage industry expects SANs to be its most potent earner this year, with growth coming at the expense of conventional direct attached storage.

RIP Direct Attached Storage

Direct attached storage, where each server has its own storage, remains the predominant technology in many enterprises. Its days are numbered.