Better interoperability and more complete management tools expected next year. At the same time, the need for more data is exploding. The Meta Group, Stamford, Conn., says that the typical data warehouse grew from an average of 100 gigabytes or less, which was the norm in 1996, to an average of between 100 gigabytes and 1 terabyte in size by 1999. Companies need the data to predict the next Big Thing for their customers, or to monitor existing trends and buying habits to make sure they're never out of stock. Corporate America, it seems, just cannot have too much data.
SANs offload the storage devices from the main corporate network to a specialized back-end network.
The SAN is essentially a dedicated link between multiple servers and storage devices that have been moved into their own mini-network. Most SANs consist of servers, storage devices that could include RAID or even SCSI-based boxes, networking devices such as hubs and switches, and software to manage it all. All the devices are then connected with a high-performance network of some sort.