There's only one defined constant--time. It moves too fast for me now, but too slow for my ninth grader. With time, everything changes. We don't even see most changes happening unless they're an "event." And it's easy to miss even a huge change if it takes long enough to happen. That's what's happening in storage right now.

Events force revolutions. The intellectual rationale for securing data isn't new, but current events force dramatic public changes. Revolutionary change catches both sides of our world by surprise: vendors who aren't ready to participate in the new world order, and IT buyers who aren't educated about the issues and resolutions of that new order. Market revolution driven by events allows new vendors to grab a slice of the business and ride to unimaginable heights. Almost every successful organization can point back to an event, or an unforeseen break created by an event, that led to its opportunity to play.