Storage once seemed easy to define. But those assumptions are changing with the shifting sands of business priorities, IT development and wider challenges. And, most obviously, the exponential rise in data volumes.

The hype surrounding utility computing, for example, is reaching a crescendo, and nowhere more than in the area of storage.

The idea is logical enough: that appropriate storage resources are made available to users as and when they need them.

And functions such as management and provisioning will be automated to such an extent that traditional administrative headaches disappear. That's the theory, anyway.

Computing's Special Report looks at how to define the way we store, secure and access information.