Are you an IT professional who needs to find more efficient, cost-effective ways to handle the storage of your burgeoning corporate data before your infrastructure costs spiral out of control?

If so, there's good news: innovation is alive and well in the storage field. That's according to our sister site Byte and Switch, which today launched its regular Top 10 storage startups special report.

There are no household names here, no billion-dollar businesses with systems carrying million-dollar pricetags. The focus is squarely on innovative software and hardware that enhances the flexibility of IT organizations. It includes the likes of Ocarino Networks, a stealth mode vendor planning to release data compression technology for both primary and backup storage devices.

Then there's Qlusters which has the goods to take on giants like HP and IBM with open-source management and provisioning software that spans virtual and physical systems. More than $30 million in funding suggests this will be a company to reckon with.

Do you know of a storage innovator we haven't identified? Submit their name below, or put it in front of the storage community over at Byte and Switch.