The last decade has seen a revolution in the way in which digital information is generated and organized. There has been a clear shift from centralized content creation, such as by commercial creators of content, to a distributed model (also known as Web 2.0), in which every user creates content. This trend, combined with the phenomenal growth in digital imaging storage requirements, has created a huge demand for storage solutions that can handle all the data. The result is a call for a new type of storage architecture - one that is scalable, reliable, and easy to manage.

The IBM XIV Storage System provides a revolutionary solution for these requirements, in that it combines unlimited scalability and unprecedented ease of management with groundbreaking Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

We investigate here the requirements of the new applications so as to understand why they are different from traditional requirements and how current storage architectures fall short of their needs. We will also explore how the XIV system, with its entirely new storage paradigm, provides a solution for these needs.