Okay, summer's over. Let's get back to work...

But first, let's look at what's new. Microsoft has taken WinFS, its new file system, out of the first release of its next operating system. The story is that WinFS will follow soon after the OS releases. For most of us, this is something we don't need to worry about for a couple of years, at least.

EMC has reduced prices on its Celera line of NASes. Network Appliance still dominates the high-end NAS business and its alliance with NTP Software for storage management gives it a significant advantage in the marketplace.

Speaking of NTP Software, they have released their Deep Scan technology for content filtering. Deep Scan uses sophisticated heuristics to determine the real content of a file without creating a huge impact on storage platform performance.

What's on tap for Q4? Based on the conversations we've been having, the number one issue for most people is extending the life of their existing hardware platform. While many people planned for rapid growth, compliance, which has come to mean you can't delete anything, has compounded the problem. The hardware and software facilities to handle compliance are just emerging. Most of us will be stuck with just muddling through for another two quarters at least.

Security, of course, is also on everyone's mind. (Hey, this is Information Storage & Security Journal, right?) Both the privacy laws and compliance have put security at the forefront. But looking at what's going on, we are reminded of the day when we used to do network audits... If you wanted to find fault with someone's network, there were a few spots to check that were guaranteed to be trouble. Today's storage security is like that. We've yet to meet anyone who can score 100 in an audit of storage security. A lot of installations can't even get close. (Wanna try to be the first to score 100? Call us.)

Storage security is an area where there is a lot of work to be done. (Remember the recent story about a bank's off-site tapes that were lost with millions of unencrypted records?) The current state of the art is appalling. We'll all be working on this for years to come

All in all, it should be an interesting Q4. Stay tuned...