Scott Tyler Shafer and Mario Apicella

With employees increasingly relying on PDAs, which they may or may not (but should) synchronize with their PCs, and taking laptops on the road, PC backups are something all companies could be a bit more diligent about.

Despite economic uncertainty, we still think this was a good year for storage.

If we haven't mentioned Linux very often in our columns, it's because not much was happening there in relationship to storage. Although a Linux server could always be attached to a variety of storage devices, the Linux platform was not keeping pace with the frequent announcements of new management software for Unix or Windows.

Although most of the buzz surrounds SCSI and Fibre Channel devices, a new category of storage devices has been quietly evolving.

Hoping to regain its place in an industry it practically invented, IBM Corp. is making all kinds of noise in the storage arena.