PRO+ Premium Content/Storage

The history of network storage plays like the bellows of an accordion -- a lot of expansion followed by a lot of contraction. Networked storage's first "aha!" moments came when system administrators realized they could rope in all that server storage running rampant through the data center doing who knows what. For the first time, they could have some semblance of control -- and security -- over the storage environment. But it didn't take long for "aha!" to turn into "uh oh" as centralized storage resources grew to overwhelming dimensions. That growth caused management methodologies to meander, backup operations to break and early retirement plans to move forward. The answer, of course, was to decentralize all that storage capacity into little chunks that would be easier to handle. Too many chunks? Consolidate and crank up that accordion again. That formula seems to have worked for more than a few decades, but 21st century computing is a lot harder to tame. The big game changer is IoT, which adds billions of "things" every year ...