A few years ago the mention of storage would provoke yawns, but today most firms see storage strategies as a top priority.
Over the last year, the importance of storage has boosted storage specialists' fortunes, spawned a host of startups and shaken up the organisation of the largest com- puting firms. For firms buying theogy, there are signs that the competition could improve choice and lower prices. But rapid developments mean IT managers will have to decide which approaches will be best in the long term, and which suppliers can be depended on to meet changing needs.
In September, IBM elevated its storage group to the same level as servers and global services-Â the highest in its structure-Â and named turnaround specialist Linda Sanford to whip its storage business into shape.
Nora Denzel, appointed leader of Hewlett-Packard's storage division in July, said: 'HP is transforming itself from a server company that happens to sell storage to a storage company that happens to sell servers.' That is a brazen message for a firm with billions of dollars in annual server sales.
These moves highlight the increasing competitiveness of the business and the threat to storage specialists EMC and Network Appliance. HP, Hitachi Data Systems, Sun Microsystems, IBM, VA Linux Systems and Dell are launching new products against EMC and Network Appliance, and for the first time, Network Appliance and EMC are competing with each other in earnest.
The storage industry faces two key questions. Firstly, what will become of the high-end storage area network (SAN) technology. And secondly, will companies buy storage equipment directly or rely on specialist storage service providers?
For years, high-end vendors have advocated SANs as a way to centralise storage devices in a high-speed network, separate from the rest of the corporate network. While the main network is typically based on Ethernet, SANs are based on Fibre Channel communication technology.
In 2000, Fibre Channel network hardware makers such as QLogic, Brocade Communications Systems and Gadzoox were joined by two new publicly traded firms. EMC spinoff McData went public in August, while Inrange floated in September.
SANs work reasonably well but have been hampered by weak standards. Many devices  such as network switches, disk storage systems and SAN adapter cards in servers  have been unable to communicate with each other unless laboriously tested. 'We can put a solution on the floor that will take care of the problem. EMC can too. The problem is they can't talk to each other,' said Dave Roberson, chief operating officer of Hitachi Data Systems.
Dick Watts, chief executive of storage startup Scale8, added, 'There was some sense of disappointment in how well the problems have been solved in SANs.'
HP's Denzel has predicted that ultimately, effective standards will emerge to whittle down vendor profit margins. But such a view remains speculation, and it is still unclear when standards will materialise and which vendors will triumph as a result. For IT buyers, this increases the difficulties of making prudent purchasing decisions.
