Mark Jones and Mario Apicella

Storage managers cried out for interoperability, and behold, the storage management software platform was born! The concept of storage management heterogeneity is gaining traction in the vendor community courtesy of companies such as EMC Corp., TrueSAN Networks Inc., and Sun Microsystems Inc.. But some unfinished business remains that threatens to trap you in more dark proprietary corners.

We might pretend we saw it coming all along, but recent history proves that what looks like a great idea often turns out to be a huge flop. Outsourced storage is one promising concept that never made a huge splash.