McElhatton's solution makes a lot of sense. But storage networks--be they storage area networks (SANs), network attached storage (NAS) or some derivation of Internet protocol storage--add wrinkles of their own to the challenge of managing storage. For example, a DAS scheme generally means dealing with one or two vendors. In contrast, Glasshouse's Shirman says, the average SAN, which requires software and networking technology as well as the storage hardware, can use products from five to seven vendors.

As a result, IS departments need more software and services in order to manage the networks, allocate storage capacity and get various vendors' products to work together. In fact, some analysts are saying that the budget that used to go to hardware is merely moving over to accommodate the increased need for services and software. Storage hardware vendors such as EMC are reading the tea leaves the same way and branching out into software and services in an effort to retain market share.

Still, for most companies it's not a question of whether they'll move to networked storage, but when. "You have to go there," says Sheetz's Medairy about the network, "because users want to get at that data. But it really changes how you manage storage." For one thing, it's much more difficult to maintain a storage network without disrupting the users. "Now that we have more applications throughout more business units storing data on different servers on the network, timing becomes harder to deal with," he says. "It's not a matter of just kicking a few users off the system any more. This affects lots more people."