Storage purchases, long on a steep growth curve, are projected to continue on that same trajectory during the next few years. IDC estimates that 400,000 terabytes of storage capacity will be sold this year, more than tripling to 1.3 million terabytes by 2002. That's a lot of bits and tape libraries and RAID assemblies. It's also a sizable piece of IT's budget and is growing annually. Dataquest projects the cost per megabyte of storage this year to be roughly 15 cents, a price that could fall to as little as three cents per megabyte in three years.
Market analysts point to a number of factors driving enterprises' voracious consumption of storage.
In the age of extranets, data must be more accessible to external parties, meaning their availability thresholds must be high and processing speeds fast. Then throw in the associated applications for that data. Additionally, banner ads, product catalogs with pictures or sound, or streamlining video for training purposes gobble up megabytes of storage by the pound. A NAS works well if a company has large numbers of LAN users, with lots of client-server applications and data getting passed around. Moreover, if users change frequently and there are large numbers of files and projects, NAS may be the best way forward.