I was recently send a link by someone pointing me to YouOS, a site that showcases the power of AJAX and web services available today. What YouOS reminded me of is that the concept of decentralized data storage still hasn't taken off for some reason. Or is it only my perception?

The only companies I know of that I would consider as using real P2P technology to allow their customers to store and retrieve data in a decentralized fashion are Allmydata and Peerio.

Whereas it is only Peerio who seems to understands that there is a major corporate market out there for such solutions. The storage virtualization market is ripe for a new entrant to challenge the likes of IBM who hold a virtual monopoly on it with their SAN solutions.

I couldn't imagine GeneralMotors, Intel or simply SME's to outsource their data storage services to the likes of Google and Microsoft. I mean c'mon you wouldn't want to trust "someone else" to securely store your companies sensitive data, right?

But then again, you wouldn't want to invest the sums that these giants are putting on the table to build their global server infrastructure. So what about secure P2P storage where you could decide with whom you would partner to store you data on? Or if you want to use only your company internal computers, there's plenty of space available with a 30-40% utilization of storage space in your company.

Have to think a bit more about this but since starting to track these trends in storage technology it's becoming more and more apparent that there is room for improvement in the industry. After all, what is Google really about other than offering storage that makes up a lot of information? And... would it be such a good idea that one company would have access to all your data?