But that was before companies faced the need to double their storage capacity every six to 12 months. That was before Sept. 11 cast the need for reliable data backup into high relief, and before companies realized that they needed to interconnect isolated pools of storage in order to maximize ROI from expensive ERP, CRM and e-business systems. Before the worldwide storage capacity swells from 283,000 terabytes in 2000 to more than 5 million terabytes by 2005, as Adam Couture, an analyst at Gartner in Stamford, Conn., predicts.

Once an oxymoron, storage strategy is starting to get the attention it deserves, driven in part by cost. CIO’s exclusive survey "Managing Storage" (conducted in February 2002) found that on average 22 percent of a company’s total IT budget will be allocated to storage this year (some analysts estimate that the budget bite can go as high as 50 percent). More than half of the survey respondents said that senior management is paying more attention to storage now. With that kind of scrutiny, smart CIOs will have to figure out how to cheaply and effectively manage their portion of that 5 million terabyte elephant.

The good news is that the exponential growth in data has led to a corresponding surge in technologies and tactics that will eventually help CIOs manage storage across the entire company. The bad news is that that array of choices has transformed storage management into an increasingly complex topic. So this is a good time to take stock of where you are?and begin developing the strategies that can help you get to where you want to be in the future.

Who Brought That Elephant in Here?

"[Storage strategy] is just starting to hit CIOs’ radar screens," says Mark Shirman, CEO and president of Glasshouse Technologies, a storage consultancy in Framingham, Mass. "We’ve probably talked to 50 or so CIOs in the past six months, and we get one of two reactions. One is, ’Yes, storage is a huge cost, and we’re just starting to take a look at how to better manage it.’ The other one is, ’Huh?’"

Harry Roberts falls into the first camp. "We’re taking the first steps in managing storage as an entity?we’re just putting together a five-year plan for storage, for example," say Roberts, vice president and CIO of Boscov’s Department Stores, a $1 billion retailer based in Reading, Pa. Roberts, who predicts that his storage needs will grow by 50 percent every year, has reexamined his disaster recovery plan and is evaluating technologies that will help him manage storage growth without having to expand his staff. "We’re talking terabytes of data, and that’s a huge amount of stuff to take care of. So we really have to start thinking about it," he says.