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Storage today comes in as many flavors and prices like ice cream, and tiered storage makes the most of that. The idea is nothing new: Automatically move data to the lowest-cost storage device possible, depending on timeliness and importance. Vendors are yielding to market demand and integrating low-end and high-end storage within the same device. This eventually leads to information lifecycle management (ILM), where data is matched to the appropriate media throughout its useful life. Expect to hear a lot about new products in the tiered storage market in the coming year, as the market moves toward the ILM goal.

Storage hardware will be rendered a tiered commodity by software-based information life-cycle functionalities-virtualization, automated storage resource management/provisioning, data protection/recoverability, hierarchical storage management (HSM)-like functionality, data classification/movement, interoperability, etc-which will become the primary enterprise storage differentiator. Consolidation of storage resources will be at the top of IT managers in 2005, analysts say.