Not long ago, the dominant form of electronic communication among people was telephones. The core of the infrastructure was the telephone network. When the Internet emerged during the nineties, IP networks become the new core for electronic communications. Many proprietary standards and technologies died during each of these phases – such as the telegraph and, largely, the token ring.
As cloud is transitioning into the mainstream, it’s likely that the pattern will repeat. For cloud, data is key and so storage needs to evolve a new core architecture based on IP networking. Companies such as Google and Facebook recognized this new core approach and embraced it in their architectures. However, to reach the stage where storage is a standard core architecture akin to IP networks today, we must move well beyond today’s hype.