* Information protection. As information becomes more and more critical to the success of an organization, the ability to ensure continuous access to that information becomes more important. Enterprise storage must be able to provide the necessary functions to enable fault tolerance to avoid unplanned outages, provide for information availability in the event of unplanned outages, provide for recovery following such outages, and enable the continuance of information availability through planned interruptions (eg. backup or batch processes).
* Information management. The information explosion and technological advances have combined to create an exponentially increasing demand for information storage. As the amount of information organizations are demanding continues to grow, the ability to manage that information and the infrastructure that supports it is becoming a more critical factor. Enterprise storage systems need to not only facilitate the operation, maintenance, and allocation of information storage; but in addition, they need to facilitate the ability to access that information from any system across the enterprise all with fewer and fewer resources per unit of data.
it ate the ability to access that information from any system across the enterprise all with fewer and fewer resources per unit of data.
* Information sharing. As speed and flexibility become dominant drivers in the way organizations manage their information, they will need to be able to leverage the same information among many applications and hosts. Enterprise storage needs to provide the functionality to enable multiple systems to access the same information for such applications as web hosting, messaging, data warehouses, and engineering systems.