Data is growing exponentially and new data storage solutions are hitting the market every day. With all of this complexity, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to evaluate the myriad of product choices and make strategic purchasing decisions. PROMISE Technology forecasts eight key trends that will have a significant impact on the storage technologies customers will consider in 2011.

"Storage technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace and will continue in 2011," said Ray Bahar, vice president of sales and marketing for the Americas, Promise Technology. "We're seeing capacity of the average device double every year, while the price tag consistently falls. Variables like new digital data types, more intense regulatory requirements, Web 2.0, mobile applications and the desire to automate business processes are all factors affecting the industry. 2011 will see more unprecedented change as vendors of all sizes get positioned for this new decade."

Bahar predicts there are seven key trends that will dramatically impact data storage purchases in 2011. These include:

Demand for solid-state drives will increase as transaction volume increases -- Adoption of solid state drives, especially embedded SSDs, will start to emerge because they are ideal for small transactional I/O patterns, are less noisy, consume less energy, vibrate less and work at extreme temperatures. People are looking for improved I/O transaction-based performance and SSDs are up to 100 times faster than HDDs on the device level.

Complex graphics and 3D animation will drive need for more storage and faster performance -- Video, 3D and complex graphics are increasingly being used in the enterprise and by consumers. They need to be stored in a way that allows quick and easy access. Increased performance and scalability for applications from online video to smart phones means newer storage products.

The Intel Xeon C5500/C3500 (formerly Jasper Forest) will mark a seminal change in the industry -- The C5500/C3500 is dramatically increasing storage performance, while addressing the exponential growth of data. Its architecture has also enabled a variety of applications written for it to address critical areas such as backup and archival, media applications, video surveillance and more. The Xeon C5500/C3500 will likely become the de-facto industry standard processor.

Business continuity, disaster recovery and compliance requirements will drive many storage decisions -- Informational continuity is essential for every business. Loss of availability can lead to loss of service delivery and severely damage a business. IT organizations can implement strategies and solutions that enhance operational efficiencies within the enterprise to proactively manage their Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA), lower costs and bring organizations into regulatory compliance while understanding risk exposures and managing loss expectancy. To address the need of being compliant with business continuity procedures and maintain compliance with regulations, users need to work with vendors that have the ability to provide solutions for backup to ensure data is secured and in compliance.

External storage market will continue to boom as unstructured data increases -- The explosion in unstructured data with the challenge of scaling to meet these requirements cost-effectively is driving the boom in the external storage market with no end in sight. Users will continue to look for ways to reduce operating cost and complexity for their storage environment, which include everything from video to images to photos to medical records to log files. New emerging technologies in cloud storage, scale-out architectures and unified storage platforms will push users to think of more efficient storage products.

Green storage options have businesses rethinking how they produce, distribute and consume technology -- Users are looking for more ways to implement storage solutions that are environmentally friendly and reduce cost. More dense systems using higher capacity drives will reduce footprint, power and cooling cost. Also adding features such as Massive Array of Idle Disks ( MAID 2.0) to allow for drive and controller spin down will enhance energy savings so the long-term storage needs of data centers can be handled. Also, many green products today will reduce the use of hazardous materials like Pb (lead), Cd (cadmium), Br (Bromine) and halogens. Ultimately, keeping data online is a valuable business proposition as it improves data access, while being more efficient.

Legislative reform in the U.S. will create pent-up demand for IT products -- The demand for additional capacity based on new rules for archiving will drive the need for more efficient and high performance storage. But the recession's severity will tamp demand as IT buyers exhibit an air of caution on purchases. Issues around the world's economy and the value of currency in general will add to the caution.