There may be a slight respite for storage managers who have spent the last few years trying to keep up with runaway storage growth, according to the results of Storage magazine's spring 2007 Purchasing Intentions Survey. But make no mistake--while it looks like the breakneck pace may be slowing down a bit, increasing capacity is still high on nearly every storage shop's to-do list.

For the first time in the five years we've been conducting our survey (which gauges what storage technology purchases storage managers are likely to make in the coming year), the average amount of storage our 680 respondents say they'll buy dropped from the previous year's level. The expected additional capacity is still considerable--an average of 37TB--but approximately 8% lower than last fall's average and roughly equal to the spring 2006 estimate.