The increasing dependency of businesses on digital information is leading to larger and more complex information storage environments that are challenging to manage. This gives a very clear indication of a growing demand for well qualified storage professionals. With the storage industry growing at a healthy rate, the demand for certified data storage professionals is all set to increase manifold. If you are an IT professional and want to foray into the storage domain, you will have to leverage your existing skills set in IT, gain experience and undergo certifications to enhance your knowledge of the domain. Storage is a domain that has not been standardized yet and there are many vendor specific products (IBM, Hitachi, EMC, Symantec, Net App), and solutions that are deployed in enterprises. These storage solutions are unable to talk to each other and thus create restrictions for professionals as they get stuck with one solution and its deployment. They cannot switch their expertise of one vendor-specific product to another. For instance a backup storage professional on Symantec Veritas won't be able to leverage his expertise to a competing product. With the advent of virtualization software, communication between conflicting vendor products is possible. Enterprises seek professionals who have solid understanding of the various kinds of storage devices and solutions available. The focus towards data storage can be attributed to the growth of globalization, e-commerce and user expectations of zero down time. The role of storage professionals is becoming far more complex including the need to understand a wide array of technologies, vendor solutions and compliance and security techniques, and also to meet the expectations of the users. Thus to prepare yourself as a storage professional, it's advisable that you combine vendor-neutral and vendor-specific training and certifications to position yourself well. To succeed you will also have to enhance your skills and knowledge as technology advances.