Anyone who has ever worked in an organization of, say, more than 50 people is aware of the phenomenon of mission-creep. It's always clear that it has occurred when the person whose initial job was ordering Post-its finds himself handling quality control, handling "external relations" (whatever that is), and traveling two-thirds of the time to make sure branch offices are using the right copying paper. Does any of this ring a bell for today's storage professionals?Storage analyst Charles King calls attention to the new complexities storage managers face in the wake of networked storage, virtualization, and other centralizing technologies that do away with direct-attached or isolated storage gear.

Yeah, storage has become more than handling daily and weekly backups. State and federal laws concerning data privacy and preservation have turned storage pros into legal scholars, archivists, and enforcement specialists.

Handling tape rotation is a far cry from deciding how long untouched data remains on a server. Selecting a SAN vendor may look like a cakewalk after setting up corporate policies that decide who gets access to what data, and when. And IT is no longer defined by 18-month projects where it makes sure manufacturing has all the capacity it needs -- it's working more frequently as a team in a centralized data center, looking at the business and its challenges a little more holistically.

I've bloviated before about the demise of the specialist, and I'm not so sure that it's a bad thing. In this day and age when this index has crashed or that price peaks anew, it seems like someone with intimate knowledge of the business and the technical wherewithal to address its thorniest issues might have more job security (and make more money) than the guy who swaps out tapes every night.

Or buys the Post-its.