How and where big companies store the bits and bytes containing their digital data couldn’t be described as the glamorous side of information technology. Indeed, until recently, data storage was just another component of the system: if IBM sold you the mainframe, it sold you the storage too.

But with the amount of data stored at a typical Fortune 2000 company doubling—and soon, perhaps, tripling—every year, this once sleepy corner of the IT world is being transformed. The global market is booming: in the next five years, storage-related hardware and software sales are expected to rise to $47 billion, from $27 billion. Yet current technologies, such as server-attached storage, simply can’t handle this rapid growth in the volume of data and will soon be swept aside.

Hoping to take part in the boom, many companies—including storage giant EMC, server companies (notably Compaq Computer and Dell Computer), networking powerhouses (like Sun Microsystems), and start-ups (such as Brocade and Vixel)—are following the money. Here, as on many other technology battlegrounds, the outcome will depend on whether standards can be established and, if so, which company establishes them. (See sidebar, "Hard knocks in the hard-disk-drive industry.")

A succession of shocks

The...