This IDC study explores the forces reshaping the types of storage solutions deployed by organizations over the next five years. It provides a model for accessing the impact of providing storage for virtualized IT environments, supporting the growth of unstructured data, and managing the creation and replicated data. This study also discusses how these factors will affect the technologies and product design approaches that storage solution suppliers adopt to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse customer base.

"The continued expansion in creation and archiving of unstructured information is already having a dramatic impact on organizations' storage environments," said Richard L. Villars, vice president of Storage Systems research at IDC. "IT executives are realizing that managing such file-based, unstructured data will become the primary task for their storage administrators."