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1. Storage management tools mesh with enterprise management tools
The line between storage management tools and enterprise management
frameworks blur as storage management tool vendors add more features
into their products to make them more attractive to potential customers.
I would not be surprised to see Veritas competing head to head with the
likes of IBM, HP, and CA on new management products where there once
wasn't competition.
A company like Veritas will look to enable management of its
competitors products and vice-versa. Imagine if Veritas' SANPoint
Control could manage an Oracle Instance and the Data Lifecycle of the
Oracle Database (backup job, etc.) or the backup jobs of IBM's Storage
Manager.
2. Storage management vendors rush to support new protocols like iSCSI
With the market for Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) solutions on the decrease vendors will be looking to capture new protocols that enable additional revenue streams at the same time customers are looking for solutions that bring together their distributed enterprise storage requirements from DAS, FCP, and NAS to new protocols like iSCSI. I look to 2004 to be the year of iSCSI.
Many analysts are predicting FCP to take a downward turn in terms of
additional sales which means that new protocols like iSCSI will begin to
be deployed in mass quantities which in turn means that new management
paradigms will be developed bridging together traditional network based
management (IP) and storage management.
Many of the key tools in this space already exist, but new partnerships and solutions will need to be brought to market to serve the ever increasing needs of the enterprise storage manager.
3. Storage management vendors will move to integrate a new mantra
"Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)" into their solutions
Virtualization and provisioning have become over played during 2003.
Customers and analysts alike are now looking for storage management
solutions that manage each stage in the life of a given data set, from
the provisioning of the base LUN or file, to the backup or snapshot, and
finally the archive. These new tools will also take into account the
tier of storage and the data protection policy that applies to each type
of storage based on the customer's perceived requirements; does the
data require platinum, gold, or silver storage? Along with each level
the costs for the storage may increase along with the required SLAs. In
this way a customer can understand the true costs of the storage and
then manage accordingly. The Information Lifecycle Manager or Architect
will play a key role in determining the requirements for the placement
of data within an organization.
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