Now, call me naïve, but it seems IBM wouldn't be interested in OEMing a product unless it was a commodity that sold in sufficient volume to allow IBM to squeeze those margins. My point? Commoditization is upon us in storage networking, even if we're not always ready to call it by name.
One point: So far, this commoditization has mainly affected hardware. When it comes to SAN switches, for instance, per-port pricing seems headed for a par with Ethernet gear. But it may not be too soon to start thinking about how commodization is apt to hit software, as well. By the time most organizations get a second or third NAS device, for instance, they'll probably be ready to start thinking about management software and other applications typically associated with bigger boxes.
One source thinks commoditization is part of an ongoing process. Tom Clark director of solutions and technologies at McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), veteran of the connectivity industry, and author of a couple of major tomes on storage networking says enterprise customers paid (in some cases through the nose) for cutting-edge, high-end storage throughout the nineties, enabling the industry to carry out R&D, get the technology robust, and now, half a decade on, bring the benefits of networked storage to a mass market at far more affordable prices.
Tom reckons that, if this commoditization continues (and there's no reason to believe it won't), we'll eventually see networked storage carry on into the SOHO market and even into the consumer market, as folks start to want backup for their TiVos or personal video recorders (PVRs). We're already seeing the advent of early appliances (see Storage Goes Home and Netgear, Western Digital Team Up).
My conversation with Tom Clark was an interesting one, in fact, but he had to cut it short to run a backup on his refrigerator... I hear Whirlpool may bring out some software to automate that process for you, Tom. It's going to be called Cold Storage Management.
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