In 2007, IDC estimated that 211 PBs of iSCSI storage was shipped worldwide. This grew to 500 PBs shipped in 2008 and was forecast to continue to grow in 2009 and beyond. But what those numbers do not reveal is that it is mid-sized enterprises who bought the majority of these iSCSI storage systems. Now these same organizations are about to get a wakeup call as they start their upgrade cycles and encounter the challenges associated with migrating data to newer iSCSI storage systems. (read more)

Cloud is this year's virtualization, or ILM, or even ASP for those of us who go back a while. Cloud is the latest term of interest in the data management market, but one that is fraught with the same level of confusion and misunderstanding as those previous terms. However, cloud brings with it a certain level of interest and for good reason: virtualization technologies are one of the only methods available that offer to solve a problem plaguing IT budgets and environments. (read more)

Ever since I stopped writing technology reports for Storage magazine a few years ago, people periodically ask me when I am going to start writing them again. Until a few months ago, the answer was "No plans to write them." But then I started to receive some really good ideas from individuals like Kelly Polanski over at WaveBreak Marketing as well as Jim Nash, DCIG's new Business Development Manager. Their ideas, coupled with my own internal desire to once again resume writing these reports, pushed me over the edge and down this road again. (read more)

At the conclusion of a recent call I had with Rob Tellone, the CEO of vBC Cloud, he asked me, "What do you consider the difference between business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR)?" I gave him my definition of each but then went on to explain to him that on the business side of the house no one really cares about the definition of either BC or DR. At the end of the day, all they care about is how quickly and cost effectively IT can bring the affected parts of their business back online regardless of the scope of the incident. (read more)

Just a few years ago disk-based backup was considered the cutting edge of backup. No more as cloud storage is now all the rage. However a cloud-based backup strategy that works or using cloud storage for archival data is still the exception, not the rule. This is why CommVault's announcement today regarding its new cloud storage connector merits attention for those organizations looking to make cloud storage a viable part of their corporate data management strategy. (read more)

Anyone who has ever witnessed a disaster knows that one of two things can happen. Either the area affected by the disaster can be devastated, never to recover; or, new life can spring up in its place. In many respect, the economic disaster that hit the entire nation and world hit the data storage industry equally hard. However the data storage industry is picking itself back up and, based upon what I saw and heard this week at The BDEvent in Palo Alto, CA, it has brought an end to one era in data storage while the dawn of another is now upon us. (read more)

Some of the most read blogs on DCIG's website in 2009 covered how small and midsize businesses (SMBs) were implementing disk-based backup in their environments. So it should come as no surprise that individuals like Ken Clipperton, the Director of Information Technology at Midland Lutherans College (MLC), is also in the midst of implementing disk-based backup at MLC. What is unexpected are some of the decisions that he needs to make as he implements it at MLC. (read more)

I have heard it said that you cannot compare the complexity found in small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) to what is found in the "really big" enterprise shops. That is certainly true in some cases but when one starts to examine the complexity associated with backing up, recovering and managing data at the dozens of branch offices that many SMEs support, it equates to any challenge that large enterprises face. However it is this exact complexity that the new features on the Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0 are designed to address. (read more)

The benefits of virtualization - server or storage - start to loose some of their shine as organizations come to grips with the reality of actually managing a virtualized environment. As the move from implementation to management, the hidden issues of managing virtualized environments become clearly exposed. It is for these reasons that storage providers like 3PAR are more tightly integrating their InServ Storage Servers with VMware's vCenter Server management console to provide better management of virtual data centers. (read more)

Small, mid-sized and large enterprises are not the only ones looking to consolidate and simplify their IT management to create more cohesive management solutions. In the last few years, Symantec has been taking many of the same steps to integrate components of its Backup Exec, Enterprise Vault and NetBackup product suites to deliver solutions appropriate for the different size organizations that it serves. The progress that it has made in delivering on these ideals is reflected in today's Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7 product releases. (read more)

This week it was evident everyone is getting back to work - at least those individuals who still have jobs and received something other than pink slips over the holiday break. People starting returning my phone calls and emails, PR agencies started requesting my time again for briefings and, maybe most importantly, news releases started flowing again so I have something other than 2009 recaps and 2010 trends to write about. This week three news items caught my attention: FalconStor Software's FDS 2.0 release; a cloud storage announcement from Pillar and a new term (like this industry needed any more): Disaster Proof Hardware. (read more)

Right now deduplication and replication are the two main features seen as critical to delivering on the promise of disk-based backup. But as organizations store more of their backup data to disk, they are quickly realizing that other features are required to successfully execute on the redesign of their backup infrastructures. Specifically, companies with numerous remote offices are finding that systems availability and data management cannot be overlooked in their disk-based backup redesigns and is what today's release of FalconStor's File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) 2.0 is intended to address. (read more)

An article that appeared back in 2009 on the Forbes website commented on the questions that executive management teams are asking about proposals that they are receiving from their IT departments. Their uncertainty is probably only heightened when their IT departments bring forward a proposal that recommends a seemingly new process that involves the deployment of lesser understood technologies like deduplication and replication. (read more)

Right now on Yahoo finance it is counting down what it considers the top 10 tech trends for 2010. However some of the trends that it is including in its top 10 are so broad in their definition that when it lists 'Data Centers' as its #2 trend and then identifies nearly every technology company in the space as being part of this trend, you have to question just how real this trend is? The list of what I consider the more subtle storage trends of 2010 will be a bit more specific in terms of what features, products, services and/or vendor alliances are taking place that support these theories. (read more)

Right now a major re-alignment is taking shape in the computer industry driven in large part by enterprises questioning the value of heterogeneous hardware and software solutions. Heterogeneity originally lowered upfront procurements costs but over time it created new levels of complexity when it came time to make these disparate solutions work well together. These difficulties are leading more providers to build end-to-end solution offerings that is raising questions about the role that independent enterprise software providers like Symantec will provide in this new world. (read more)