Easier Management, Reduced Opex Lead More Organizations to Adopt Software-Defined Storage

Transcription

1 Easier Management, Reduced Opex Lead More Organizations to Adopt Software-Defined Storage Economic and operational benefits are driving the rapid pace of adoption, according to a new study. RESEARCH BRIEF Software-defined storage (SDS) may be one of the industry s most apt examples of hyper-growth: A big market that is expanding rapidly, with clear signs of continued adoption and high customer satisfaction. For those not yet fully up to speed on SDS, it is an approach to data storage in which the programming that controls storage-related tasks is decoupled from the physical storage hardware. SDS places the emphasis on storage-related services rather than storage hardware. 1 SDS various benefits, including simplified storage management, are driving large and growing adoption rates. One researcher says the market will grow from $1.4 billion in 2014 to more than $6.2 billion by 2019 a 35% compound annual growth rate. 2 As storage becomes an increasingly complex challenge for organizations looking to overcome the pressures of massive data growth, IT and storage decision makers are turning to SDS for a variety of operational and economic reasons. 1 Software-defined storage, SearchSDN, May SDS Market Global Forecast to 2019, MarketsandMarkets, January 2015 A TECHTARGET WHITE PAPER

2 Easier Management, Reduced Opex Lead More Organizations to Adopt Software-Defined Storage Now, a recent survey conducted with 175 IT professionals highlights just how rapidly organizations are adopting SDS, as well as why they feel so positively about what the technology has done for them to date. Among the key findings of the survey: More than 38% of respondents say their organizations have adopted SDS to at least some degree. That number is expected to swell to more than 51% 12 months from now, according to respondents. The key benefits driving SDS adoption are largely operational in nature, including improved scalability, more efficient storage management and easier provisioning. Operational factors are the prime drivers for SDS adoption, even though respondents certainly continue to care greatly about Capex savings. The most important SDS features driving increased adoption are backup and recovery, de-duplication and scale-out storage. SDS Adoption on the Rise Now and in the Near Future Consistent with overall industry adoption data, SDS has been widely embraced by survey respondents organizations and that trend appears likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Current Adoption Status of SDS 15% 15% 6% 22% Widely adopted throughout enterprise Adopted for specific workloads Pilots in place 13% 34% Evaluation Unsure No adoption plans now SDS already has been adopted in some form enterprise-wide, specific workloads or pilots by 38% of the respondents. It s also important to note that more than a third of respondents indicate that the technology is under evaluation, while only 15% of respondents say their organizations have no current plans to adopt SDS. If even a moderate percentage of those organizations evaluating SDS actually adopt it in the near term, it is easy to envision an imminent market landscape where most enterprises will have adopted SDS to some degree. PG. 2

3 RESEARCH BRIEF That appears to be supported by survey data that asks respondents what they expect their organizations SDS adoptions patterns will be 12 months from now. Adoption of SDS 12 Months From Now 15% 11% Widely adopted throughout enterprise Adopted for specific workloads 22% 1 1 Pilots in place Evaluation Unsure No plans to adopt 12 months from now Compared to how respondents currently see SDS adoption in their organization, IT professionals paint an optimistic picture of SDS growing foothold. For instance, they expect enterprise-wide adoption to grow from 6% to 22% in just 12 months, and pilot programs to grow from to 1. At the same time, the percentage of respondents who believe their organizations won t be evaluating the technology will drop from 15% currently to just a year from now. Comparing SDS Adoption: Current and 12 Months From Now STATUS WIDELY ADOPTED THROUGHOUT ENTERPRISE ADOPTED FOR SPECIFIC WORKLOADS PILOTS IN PLACE EVALUATION UNSURE NO ADOPTION PLANS NOW/12 MONTHS OUT 6% 22% 34% 13% 15% 11% % Perhaps not surprisingly, respondents paint a very positive picture about their organizations experience with SDS to date. Two thirds of respondents 66% call SDS adoption a good move for their organization, with the remainder of respondents indicating it is still too early to tell for certain. Not one respondent to the survey said they felt SDS adoption was a bad move. PG. 3

4 E a s i e r M a n age m e n t, R e d u ce d O p ex L ead M o re O rga n i z at i o n s to A d o pt S o f t wa re - D e f i n e d S to rage As is often the case with many new storage technologies, organizations are giving careful thought to which computing workloads are best suited for SDS. Respondents say virtualization (both server and storage utilizing any hypervisor), VMware-specific virtualization and backup/archiving are the most prevalent workloads for SDS. It s worth noting, however, that eight different workloads were cited by at least a quarter of the respondents as candidates for SDS. Workloads/Applications Currently Deployed/Considered for SDS 52% 50% Server virtualization Storage virtualization 34% 28% 28% 26% 21% VMware Backup/archiving Data protection Private/hybrid cloud Microsoft Test/development DR/BC VDI 1 HPC OLTP Compliance/governance 0% PG. 4 20% 40% 50% 60%

5 RESEARCH BRIEF Easier Management, Faster Provisioning and Less Impact on IT Staff Seen as Top SDS Benefits With such strong and growing support by respondents for SDS now and in the near term, it is understandable that they point out a number of important benefits driving that adoption. It s worth noting that respondents appear to be most drawn to SDS various operational benefits in essence, its ability to make the lives of IT professionals easier, by making technology management and deployment and provisioning faster and less problematic. Which Are the Most Significant Benefits in Deploying SDS? Improved scalability Easer storage management Easier provisioning Greater infrastructure resilience/availability Improved infrastructure performance More flexible architecture Opex savings Storage acceleration Benefit from advanced storage SW features Take advantage of innovation faster 2 21% 18% 3 36% 42% 49% 51% 0% 20% 40% 50% 60% Although respondents did not necessarily feel financial savings was the most important benefit they experienced in SDS adoption, they did indicate a number of economic upsides again, primarily related to operational issues rather than Capex to SDS. Specifically, respondents noted the ability to improve capacity utilization, less need for IT staff intervention in storage administration and faster provisioning as the top economic benefits related to operational issues. Of course, they also did cite the benefit of having to purchase fewer storage devices, obviously tied to the top benefit of improved capacity utilization. PG. 5

6 E a s i e r M a n age m e n t, R e d u ce d O p ex L ead M o re O rga n i z at i o n s to A d o pt S o f t wa re - D e f i n e d S to rage Areas of Economic Savings Due to SDS Better capacity utillization 4 Fewer storage device purchases 4 44% Less IT manpower for storage administration 39% Faster provisioning for new users 31% Lower DC costs 28% Lower SW licensing costs Able to run lower-cost, commodity HW 0% 20% 40% 50% From a features standpoint, survey respondents are most excited about SDS ability to improve such capabilities as backup and recovery, de-duplication, scale-out storage and auto-tiering. Again, these and other key software features of SDS are closely tied to the technology s ability to facilitate storage management through improved automation and more efficient utilization of existing storage resources through software, rather than hardware. Software-Implemented Features Important in SDS Deployment 56% BU/recovery 52% De-duplication 4 Scale-out storage 3 36% 33% Auto-tiering Thin provisioning Caching 21% Support for legacy investment Restful APIs 21% Designed for open standards Erasure coding PG. 6 6% 0% 20% 40% 50% 60%

7 RESEARCH BRIEF Greater SDS Education and Technical Skills Needed Although survey respondents express strongly positive attitudes toward SDS, there still are challenges that may cause some IT organizations to delay adoption. For instance, among those who said their organizations had not yet adopted SDS, a lack of internal expertise with the technology and an incomplete understanding of SDS operational benefits were noted as top inhibitors. Why Hasn t Your Organization Adopted SDS? Lack of internal expertise with SDS 42% Don t understand operational benefits well enough Cost concerns to buy/deploy SDS solutions Don t understand economic benefits well enough Don t understand technology well enough Can t integrate SDS with existing infrastructure Limited SDS solutions choices Business management not supportive IT management not supportive Lack of vendor support 14% 12% 9% 9% 4% 41% 40% 36% 34% 0% 20% 40% 50% The full range of respondents, who agreed that a lack of SDS expertise inside the organization was the single biggest challenge, further supported this trend. Respondents also expressed concern over such issues as trying to determine the best way to deploy SDS, understanding the ideal SDS model for individual workloads, and budgetary issues. PG. 7

8 Easier Management, Reduced Opex Lead More Organizations to Adopt Software-Defined Storage Challenges or Drawbacks in Deploying SDS Solutions Not enough SDS technical expertise in house 49% Not sure best deployment method 46% Not sure which SDS model is best for workloads Lack of budget 32% 36% Lack of product support across multiple vendors 16% Performance problems with SDS implementations Disappointing breadth of vendors SDS solutions 9% 0% 20% 40% 50% Conclusion Software-defined storage is a powerful market force that is experiencing widespread and growing acceptance, due to the technology s numerous benefits in storage administration. Simply put, SDS helps make it easier, more affordable and more efficient for storage professionals and IT organizations to keep up with the dramatic growth in storage requirements without adding cost and complexity to their operations. With SDS poised for continued market growth over the near term, IT organizations should continue to invest in early-stage education in order to better understand the best ways to deploy SDS for their key workloads. Those that take the time to do their homework and develop a long-range plan for taking full advantage of SDS are likely to enjoy considerable operational and financial benefits as a result. About Dell Dell listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit PG. 8