In global corporations, storage centers have evolved into their own massive, transcontinental networks. Virtualization technology has evolved in tandem, in an effort to enable users to focus on their files, rather than their physical or geographic locations. But virtualization also appeals to the managers of smaller, more localized networks - where inefficiencies and everyday disasters still abound - on account of operating systems and bus architectures that have failed to evolve at the same pace.

Enterprise networks are already preparing to embrace what storage systems analyst John Webster calls the "second wave of storage virtualization." Groundbreaking new devices may alter the very topology of large network domains, including so-called "intelligent switches" permeating the fabric of EMC storage networks, and dedicated virtualizing controllers from Hitachi Data Systems. How these manufacturers' new agendas play out among their high-end customers may very well determine the shape and function of the virtualization devices and appliances available to small and medium-sized businesses over the next few years. The key variable is which, if any, new technology sets a standard for lower-end vendors to follow.

"What we've got is an industry wrestling among itself," says Marc Farley, President of Building Storage, Inc., "to try to figure out where the most value is, to provide that virtualization or volume management function, to try to twist the market to vote with their dollars for the way that they want to implement it."

Today, the most advanced storage management technology in place for most small networks consists of RAID arrays, administered in clusters through OS functions like Windows Server 2003's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSCS). Other small businesses are bound to "external storage" that rests only a few feet from the motherboards of clients. This storage is linked by external ATA or SATA buses, and sometimes administered using non-standardized, often cryptic virtualization software. If a new standard for virtualization hardware could lead to the production of a cost-effective storage subsystem or small storage network, small businesses might be ready to skip the first wave and head directly for the second.

"The idea behind storage virtualization," says John Webster, Senior Analyst with Data Mobility Group, "[is that] you can take lots of different devices, attach a number of different operating system environments, and give those operating systems [and their] applications a single view to the storage pool." In such an environment, states Webster, new storage capacity can be added to the pool on the fly without a single moment of downtime, and without disrupting the normal flow of database transactions. "From a management standpoint," understates Webster, "that can be goodness."

The trick for storage systems leaders such as EMC, Hitachi, and IBM will be to gently and indirectly promote storage architectures capable of scaling down, in order to substantiate new standards that may eventually enable new customers to scale up. At the same time, however, these companies cannot appear to lose focus on their existing, high-end customer base. So the standards comprising the second wave must make a self-evident value proposition for downward scalability, without the need for explicit demonstration. Perhaps this can be accomplished by letting other companies - future partners - make the case for them.