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Charles Stevens, Corporate VP, Enterprise Storage Division, Microsoft Corp.: Page 10 of 16

Stevens: Low and medium range and branch... There's a need for consolidation. A lot of server systems are falling out of lifecycle support, and that creates the opportunity to consolidate. That trend will accelerate. NAS is probably the best platform, but it will also happen on SANs. But SANs won't keep up with growth unless they come down in the midmarket and get easier to manage and more secure. Until we can get over that hurdle there won't be much growth.

Byte and Switch: What else is driving the low-end market?

Stevens: ISCSI will help. Everything is overshadowed by new fast disk technology. That will be the biggest driver – replacing tape with pooled, sealed arrays that are very cheap. That's the biggest revolution. One reason we got into the storage business was we wanted to make Windows a better platform, and another was that we saw an inflection point in disk technology that would bring a new metaphor to backup – very fast local disks for very fast recovery. Tape will continue to be used, but in highly specialized environments.

Looking ahead, we envision pools of storage and blades with fast recovery and cheap, long-term storage. That's what will clearly be happening within the next few years.

Byte and Switch: Does Microsoft support serial ATA today in the Windows Storage Server?