Whatever else this year may bring, one trend is certain: the demand for IT management tools will continue to grow. In a move that illustrates this trend, EMC has begun to push into the storage integration and management market.

The company has introduced a set of software tools to manage its own storage devices and those of rival vendors. To further this cause, it has decided to share interface data with arch rival Compaq, so that firms can integrate Compaq and EMC storage in the same network.

The move is in response to growing pressure from users for EMC to open up its proprietary environment and give them the freedom to choose alternative suppliers on the basis of cost and availability.

It also reflects a demand for a single management environment for storage systems. Currently, storage systems from different suppliers have to be managed independently.

But to manage rival systems, EMC will need access to their application programming interfaces (APIs) and this is unlikely to happen any time soon. And it is unclear how much work EMC will have to do to reverse engineer the APIs of other suppliers.

Tony Lock, of analyst firm Bloor Research, said: "The microcode in APIs can change often, and firms are very protective of them. I think this attitude will change, though less quickly than makes sense from a business point of view. They would all sell even more storage systems if the APIs were open."

If management tools and services improve, the choice of suppliers of individual products will become less important, and it is likely that an increasing number of products will be managed off-site.

Intel's Online Services division is among the organisations already developing off-site management services for corporates.