Following an interview with Tony Reid, UK services director at Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Bloor Research practice leader for data centres and mainframes Martin Banks tells IT Director that "cloud economics" is the developing priority.

He explains that cloud economics are becoming "the focal point" as more organisations view their infrastructure in terms of the overall costs and benefits faced by the business through its use.

"The technology is no longer the important issue and instead the key issue for users ... is now the ability to define service levels at the next level of abstraction, in terms of quantifiable financial impacts," he writes.

Mr Banks adds that this could mean using different tiers of storage in the same way that backup archives have historically been kept on slower drives while critical data is maintained on faster disks to accelerate access.

To aid high-speed access in midrange storage environments, HDS recently announced upcoming support for 8 Gbps host ports on its Adaptable Modular Storage 2300 and 2500 systems.