Another factor fueling the drive to modernize storage infrastructures is a desire to make data backup more of a real-time process. More businesses want to back up and protect data in real time in the same manner that they're trying to use the data for real-time business processes.

Together, the need for better storage management, real-time business processes, and disaster-proof business continuity is helping to produce a wave of storage products from tech vendors. "We see the need for more and more of a mix between consolidated and distributed data," says Mark Lewis, executive VP and chief technology officer at EMC. "You want data centralized for integrity and security, but it still needs to be distributed." The storage market leader just introduced a new version of its flagship Symmetrix system that offers more capacity and faster performance. EMC also plans to enhance its software to do a better job of managing a mix of storage products from a variety of vendors.

StorageTek Covering All Bases

Profile: Data from birth to retirement New Products: New Products In a few months StorageTek will roll out EchoView, designed as low-cost storage appliance add-on to track files and data by recording every change. It can be used to recover data damaged by hackers or other problems. Also this year, look for enhanced Application Storage Manager to automatically move data from one storage medium to another based on user rules. Strengths: Data life-cycle approach--keeping new, frequently accessed data on high-performance disks, moving older, less useful data to cheaper disks, then high-performance tape, then archive tapes. Strategy: The leading vendor of high-end tape libraries wants to automate the handling and storage of data. Storage needs are growing faster than prices are falling, and management tools aren't keeping up with complexity, says Rob Nieboer, business management director.

Network Appliance Inc. also is betting this year on helping customers integrate their various types of storage. The vendor has been among the most successful at selling simple appliances that store and move files faster than general-purpose servers. Now it's trying to crack the higher-margin, high-end storage segment. A deal with Hitachi Data Systems, a leader in disk arrays, gives Network Appliance and its partners a way to integrate storage area networks with a network-attached storage gateway product. That will let data travel throughout a storage infrastructure that uses both Fibre Channel and IP transport technologies.

Market-leading vendors such as Hitachi Data Systems and IBM also plan to roll out this summer policy-based management software that's designed to make the management of storage resources more automated. The software will let companies set rules to trigger actions once certain thresholds are hit. Smaller vendors are also delivering innovation, such as CommVault Systems Inc.'s Quick Recovery and Data Duplication to help customers move blocks of data across long distances and recover from disasters. Chris Van Wagoner, CommVault's director of marketing, expects more businesses to invest money in such systems this year, partly in response to a federal government recommendation that backup sites be at least 200 miles apart.

Accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP's New York office was just four blocks from the World Trade Center when terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Nobody was hurt, and the company was back up and running from Chicago in six minutes. This year, Grant Thornton is ready to implement a hub for business continuity that will involve offices in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York. Each will be large enough for 1,000 people.

Dave Johnson, director of technology at the accounting firm, plans to replicate data among those sites using a 4700 storage system from EMC and a tape library from StorageTek. Long-term but little-used data will be archived in an off-site storage facility. Johnson would like to mirror, or replicate, data during the day, not overnight, and he's looking at software from CommVault and NSI Software. "I'm still deciding when to transfer data to the tape library, and then when to secure it" off-site, he says. "I'll probably keep 30 days worth of data hot."

IBM Looking Ahead To Services

Profile: Less hardware, more software and services New Products: Will debut Virtualization Engine later this year to catch up to rivals; it will survey and present storage resources for allocation and make infrastructure changes without going offline. Also coming: enhancements to policy-based storage software, which is migrating from mainframes into open systems. Strengths: Still a hardware force with high-end Enterprise Storage Server. One of few vendors with major consulting and integration resources to sell storage as a service. Strategy: Storage as a service probably won't happen until 2004. This year IBM may offer Storage Tank, using software to let every server on a SAN access any file on the network, eliminating the file locking that's common when servers open files far out on the network, says Alan Stuart, senior strategist for storage software.

Dorsey & Whitney LLP, an international law firm with more than 800 attorneys, is looking for a way to provide up-to-the-minute information to its Shanghai office, which has grown substantially in the past six months. It's considering NetDocuments from NetVoyage Corp., but hasn't made a final decision. "We're trying to have hot online backup," says Scott Perrin, Dorsey & Whitney's manager of network services. "If we succeed, we'll be operating in real time across the globe." The law firm also is concerned about operating if a disaster hits an office. It's using gear from Dell Computer and EMC for storage and business continuity, including an EMC 4700 system that contains 2.1 terabytes of data. "We'll also have redundant boxes over the course of the year," Perrin says. That will entail a mix of Dell PowerVault 660 SAN systems and Dell NAS 715 appliances. "If the network is down, people can access documents over the Web," he says.