This IDC study discusses the evolving information and storage requirements of organizations and how the requirements are affecting the kinds of storage solutions they will deploy in the coming years. The expansion in the range of applications that companies are developing and deploying is having a significant effect on how they are setting up their datacenters as well as how they are organizing and storing information. Over the next five years, network controllers, storage virtualization, and integrated advanced services for thin provisioning and data deduplication will remain critical competitive battlegrounds in many parts of the storage industry. The incorporation of these capabilities into standard disk system platforms will drive changes in storage systems architectures, spur significant investments in storage software, and has the potential to disrupt the current competitive environment.

"As part of broader IT infrastructure virtualization efforts, companies will look for storage virtualization solutions that provide more than basic asset consolidation. Application and data mobility will become increasingly important requirements, which will spur more interest in advanced storage virtualization solutions that provide a broad spectrum of data and information management services." — Richard Villars, vice president, Storage Systems research