Virtualisation take two: storage gets smarter

Dec 23, 2004: A new report has revealed that storage virtualisation has reached the second stage in its lifespan, with smarter storage systems emerging to manage data across different tiered environments provided by multiple vendors.

The 451 Special Report has revealed that the architectural approaches of vendors are becoming solidified and they have started to address 'server ownership' conflicts. This means that storage virtualisation will be incorporated as key foundation of technology so that heterogeneous storage services will be developed more easily.

This second wave of virtualisation is driven by many factors, including the increased complexity and diversity of storage infrastructures which are making users do more with less; the emergence of a virtualised storage infrastructure that is in line with business objectives and because storage array vendors, such as EMC, HDS and IBM are embracing virtualisation, when they used to be sceptical about it.

The research from the 451 Special Report claims that in the future, there will be mergers with file system virtualisation companies and NAS aggregators and/or iSCSI storage start-ups.

Analysts from 451 also believe that software makers will create virtualisation-based storage management applications that will run on the new infrastructure and these applications will work on the file level, allowing them very important for data archiving so that compliance requirements can be met.

However, the research company believes that it may be at least three to four years before these technologies become available in the mainstream. It says that over this period, the competitive landscape will shift and there will be continued consolidation.

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