Guest editor's foreword: bigger and faster and smaller

In recent years storage systems have evolved dramatically as a result of both social and technical advances. Storage systems and storage devices are found in almost any computing installation from large centralized and distributed enterprise systems to a variety of mobile consumer electronic devices. Such a wide deployment of storage has created a need to re-evaluate basic solutions in storage systems design and implementation. As part of this ongoing process of technology evolution, it is critical to find a framework to identify, understand, and evaluate a range of issues. The reliability, availability, scalability, performance, and power consumption characteristics of storage systems must be considered in a variety of traditional and emerging computing environments.