Storage licensing doesn't add up

Naveen Sharma, Griffith University's associate director of information services, recently started the first Storage Networking User Group (SNUG) in Brisbane.

Sharma says the SNUG is a user-driven effort to fast forward promises by the Storage Networking Industry Association on interoperability and a fairer storage marketplace.

One of his bugbears is vendors licensing storage software by the terabyte. Sharma argues that as storage levels skyrocket (for instance, CSIRO recently signed a deal for three petabytes), vendors are milking the per terabyte model for all it's worth. The problem, he says, is that disk storage has become increasingly cheaper to produce. Yet vendors are not passing on these savings, he says.

Do you agree with Sharma? Have you fallen victim to the per terabyte model?

If you're a vendor, let's hear your response.