Merger Mania
We've had a $13 bn merger between Symantec and Veritas. McData just gobbled up CNT, and EMC's acquisitions will soon surpass the number of McDonalds franchises in North America. Look for more mergers in 2005. Lots more, and lots of big ones too.

Virtue in Virtualization?
While virtualization has been a buzz word for years, the signs are that some vendors are getting closer. Though the actuality is unlikely to match the hype, major players like EMC, IBM and Hitachi are working hard on virtualization technology. In addition, upstarts like Katana (or VirtuOS Computing as it plans to rename itself) are keeping very hush-hush about virtual multiprocessor technology using inexpensive PCs.

Gateway to Heaven?
NAS gateways represented a major market shift in 2004. And they will continue to this year. EMC gained significant market share last year due to its support of NAS gateway initiatives. It offers Celerra running in front of Symmetrix as a NAS gateway option, while NetApp offers a gateway to HDS and HP systems. Newcomers like OnStor and Acopie also offer interesting NAS gateway products.

Less Fuzzy iSCSI
The battle between Fibre Channel and iSCSI is on! iSCSI not only has low cost on its side. It is also catching up fast in terms of performance. Expect iSCSI to carve a larger slice of the pie and FC vendors to strike back with slashed costs. Either way, users win.

Comply or Die
With some deadlines past and others looming, compliance is high on the storage agenda for 2005. Enterprise Strategy Group predicts that the total volume of compliant records worldwide will increase from 376 petabytes in 2003 to 1,644 petabytes by 2006.

ILM Hype
Faster than a speeding disk drive; more powerful than a POWER5 processor; able to leap tall Symmetrix boxes in a single bound. Is it a bird, is it a plane, no-it's I–L–M! Information Lifecycle Management. Like it or loathe it, no vendor can afford to ignore ILM. Unlike 2004, actual products may even arrive on the market showing early-day ILM features.

Switching the Switches
4-Gbps switching has arrived. Brocade and HP are first to market. IBM isn't far behind. By the end of the year, every storage and r switch vendor will be delivering 4-Gbps gear.

Tiny Disk Drive
We've had 3.5-inch drives for a while now, so its time for a change. Look for 2.5-inch drives to become more available in rack-mounted and server-blade systems.

Long Live the Tape
Yes. They've been saying it for years. Tape is finally dead. And what takes over? A better kind of tape. LTO3 tape systems from the likes of HP, IBM and Quantum can now be purchased, thereby doubling the capacity of tape to 400 GB uncompressed, and increasing the data transfer rate to 80 MBps.

Power to the User
While 2004 was the year that the ASNP boosted its membership numbers, 2005 will see the return of user power in an industry that sorely needs it. Look for many exciting programs to emerge this year that will give you more say on how vendors produce products.

Source : Robb Dennis, Association of Storage Networking Professionals