A: Sure. There are a bunch of pocket successes so far out there, and a lot more will start happening soon. For example, StoreAge sells their software (think of it as a superclustered volume manager distributed across heterogeneous machines) so that it executes not only on servers but also on the Troika (now owned by Q-Logic) platform. I understand it works well.

Falconstor has all sorts of services that can execute on an "appliance" in the network, from migration to replication to continuous data protection.

Brocade has its Data Mobility software, which runs on their Rhapsody-based switch platform in the fabric that enables heterogeneous migrations. EMC's InVista [software on a switch] is also designed for migrations, at least initially.

You can say that guys like Acopia, Neopath and Rainfinity (now EMC) are network-based intelligence platforms designed to provide file-based migration capabilities (and global name-space, etc.).

IBM's SAN Volume Controller sits in the Fibre Channel fabric to provide block virtualization and some services. I could go on all day.