Data storage is changing the way that information is organized, accessed, and preserved. The first generation of external storage systems, Storage 1.0, sought to provide more capacity for growing volumes of data associated with high computational applications. It leveraged newer, low-cost, high-capacity disks, and all intelligence associated with the data resided in the minicomputer or mainframe. Storage 2.0 distinguished itself by taking on a new dimension -- connectivity.

Organizations wanted storage systems to be a shared resource, so vendors focused on boosting the number of connections between servers and disk storage systems. Standard interconnect options emerged that allowed multiple heterogeneous high-end and midrange systems to access a common disk storage system. IDC believes that the next stage, Storage 3.0, will be based on the premise that storage systems are increasingly built on standardized hardware components, and solutions will be primarily policy driven, services oriented, and object centric. Advanced storage services, such as replication, space-efficient copy, data deduplication, and encryption, will increasingly be delivered as part of role-based storage solutions.