It has been estimated that storage costs will again rise from 1.3 billion to over 2 billion by next year. The storage infrastructure is currently growing at 50%. But it is good to know that the power and cooling of these beasts is only growing at 19% as intelligent companies look for greener solutions.

There is a good read out on InternetNews.com titled: Cheap Storage Can Still Add Up.

But I would like to hit a different topic. Since energy costs are rising and it seems that storage infrastructures are out of control, I wonder when our lovely government will step in to help control this sprawl. Surely you and I can't believe that most companies are doing everything they can to buy "green" AND I'll bet that there is wasted storage. What would you think of a governmentally controlled storage bank that always uses the best and greenest technology? Then through virtualization technologies companies are grant rights to use more storage if needed. I know it sounds stupid but how many TBs would we save if there was just ONE people table?

Too far off? Let's just take a look at the P2P file-sharing legislation going on in the UK. It is government stepping in to help control storage and network bandwidth, and yes legal file-sharing. I don't think we have to extrapolate this too much to see where it could lead.