According to industry analyst IDC, the next decade will see storage systems bundled with smarts to reduce "isolated functionality" and instead provide a "storage operating system" to boost application performance and value.

Graham Penn, IDC's Asia Pacific associate vice president of storage, said an intelligent "storage operating system" is a rapid shift from the isolated point functionality associated with today's storage systems.

Penn, who is delivering an address at Storage Networking World in Sydney next week, said storage will no longer be about individual devices or isolated SANs.

"It will be about better access to data, namely usability at a lower cost," he said.

"The objective is to build and integrate hardware and software capabilities that will help companies cost-effectively consolidate, manage, protect and archive growing volumes of digital content and by integrating intelligent storage systems with business-critical applications, there will be opportunities to boost application performance and availability.