Cloud computing has been a mega trend looming on the technology horizon for several years now, and one area it looked set to revolutionise was storage.
The idea of parking vast amounts of data on an external network that was ubiquitous, immediately scalable, cheap to operate and that had minimal impact on capital expenditure appealed to a wide range of companies, both large and small.
However, with the global slowdown and its effect on IT budgets and adoption of new technology, the model looked set to hover in the wings for a few more years as it battled to counter its maturity cycle.
Industry insiders, however, point out that cloud storage is already here, just not in the form many had expected.
'We can look at cloud storage from two aspects,' said Michael Chue, managing director of Symantec in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
'There is cloud storage supplied by an external service provider. Another is the cloud that is deployed in the enterprise data centre.
'We should not tie the cloud term 100 per cent to service providers.'
