History is littered with products and technologies that were "nice to have," but not "need to have." Because of all the fires we fight daily in our storage shops, we just don't have the time or energy to deal with "nice to haves"--we have too many "need to haves" on our plate. As Bob Brennan at Iron Mountain once told me, "You don't paint the house when it's on fire."

It's because of this phenomenon that technologies languish on the sidelines, even though it seems as if they'll provide obvious and immediate benefits. Storage resource management (SRM) is a classic example. What could possibly be bad about a tool that provides visibility and insight into the deep, dark recesses of your storage? SRM turns the lights on. Who wouldn't want to know that they have 87 copies of the same illicit pornography sitting on their Tier-1 storage? Would you buy new capacity if you knew you had tons of space you weren't even using?