2016 Trends in Storage

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1 PREVIEW 2016 Trends in Storage DEC 2015 Henry Baltazar, Research Director Though storage is far from dead, change is coming in the shape of new form factors such as hyperconverged infrastructures and disruptive technologies such as flash. Even established markets such as backup are being pressured to adapt to new customer requirements including cloud computing Research, LLC

2 ABOUT 451 RESEARCH 451 Research is a preeminent information technology research and advisory company. With a core focus on technology innovation and market disruption, we provide essential insight for leaders of the digital economy. More than 100 analysts and consultants deliver that insight via syndicated research, advisory services and live events to more than 1,000 client organizations in North America, Europe and around the world. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in New York, 451 Research is a division of The 451 Group Research, LLC and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication, in whole or in part, in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The terms of use regarding distribution, both internally and externally, shall be governed by the terms laid out in your Service Agreement with 451 Research and/or its Affiliates. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. 451 Research disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although 451 Research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, 451 Research does not provide legal advice or services and their research should not be construed or used as such. 451 Research shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO LONDON BOSTON 20 West 37th Street 3rdFloor New York, NY P F Geary Street 9th Floor San Francisco, CA P F Gower Street London, UK WC1E 6HH P +44 (0) F +44 (0) Liberty Square, 5th Floor Boston, MA P F ABOUT THE AUTHOR HENRY BALTAZAR RESEARCH DIRECTOR Henry Baltazar is a Research Director for the Storage channel at 451 Research. Henry returned to 451 Research after spending nearly three years at Forrester Research as a Senior Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations Professionals and advising Forrester clients of datacenter infrastructure technologies, including storage virtualization, cloud storage, solid-state storage and primary storage arrays. Henry has evaluated and tested storage hardware and software offerings for more than 15 years as an industry analyst and as a journalist. II

3 Key Findings For the vast majority of enterprises, budgets are not keeping pace with storage growth. This has created an unsustainable storage environment that is ultimately forcing organizations to find new ways to deal with the issue beyond the storage status quo of simply adding more traditional systems and capacity. Rapid capacity growth, lack of skilled staff and disparate storage management are all key problems that highlight the need for stronger storage management and automation. The majority of all-flash array (AFA) deployments (57%) are being used for application consolidation, while 42% of respondents are using their AFAs for accelerating individual applications. The consolidation use case represents the future of AFAs and that figure will grow rapidly in the near future, since budget-constrained organizations will want to extract as much value as possible out of their costly AFA investments. Long backup windows, retention concerns and complexity are key issues that continue to plague enterprise backup deployments, and will drive product and implementation changes in While the majority of 451 Research survey respondents currently do not view hyperconverged infrastructure as a storage replacement, the increasing momentum of these platforms along with the growing influence of virtualization administrators will help turn the tide in III

4 Executive Summary STORAGE TRANSFORMS BEYOND THE STATUS QUO Enterprise storage is changing. A combination of relentless data growth, capital expense, complexity, fragmentation and huge operational overhead is prompting many enterprises to rethink their entire storage infrastructure strategy, especially in an era of unprecedented budgetary scrutiny. Now that enterprises want the IT stack to look and behave like a cloud, the storage infrastructure must catch up. We believe that the industry is entering a transformative period, both in terms of technology and in terms of how storage is organized and managed as IT overall evolves to the next-generation datacenter. All-flash arrays (AFAs) are the hottest technology this year, and flash adoption will continue to accelerate as prices continue to fall. Disk is far from dead, but its use with high-performance workloads is waning. The concept of software-defined storage (SDS) has moved past the marketing hype phase, but is still in the proprietary phase. Individual SDS approaches vary widely, both in type (from hyperconvergence to storage virtualization to cloud-like storage automation and orchestration) and deployment method (from software-only to fully baked hardware appliance). However, at some stage, these varying definitions will settle into an agreed state. The long-term interest in SDS is high. Hyperconvergence seems to have caught the imagination of the industry with an explosion of offerings that we expect to translate into meaningful adoption in 2016, especially in smaller environments where simplicity is most desired and many customers are not already bound to a traditional storage vendor. Our longer view of the storage market contends that we will start to see some of the promises around better management, better integration and more automation actually be delivered upon. We think this will be aided by some of the broader technology transformations we are seeing: AFAs, flash and cloud-based disaster recovery (DR), among others. End users will want the best of both worlds: better management, improved integration and more simplicity, but also more choice and flexibility, and the ability to respond to what the business needs. This report presents the trends we see shaping enterprise storage in the coming year. 451 Research s 2016 Storage Trends Source: 451 Research, 2015 Tight Budgets Will Erode the Storage Status Quo Flash Will Make Capacity Gains as All-Flash Arrays Become Mainstream Storage Data Protection Innovation Will Blaze the Path to Hybrid Cloud Storage Hyperconvergence Will Leap Into the Limelight Winners Vendors with broader portfolios and partnerships; storage incumbents Vendors with full-featured AFAs Next-generation data protection players with disaster recovery and copy data management; cloud compute and storage players Hyperconverged vendors; focused software-defined storage providers with distinct target markets Losers Vendors that only sell storage in an appliance format Tier one class disk array business units Legacy backup players without a disaster recovery strategy Software-defined storage strategies that do not materially differ from existing offerings IV

5 2016 TRENDS IN STORAGE METHODOLOGY Reports such as this one represent a holistic perspective on key emerging markets in the enterprise IT space. These markets evolve quickly, though, so 451 Research offers additional services that provide critical marketplace updates. These updated reports and perspectives are presented on a daily basis via the company s core intelligence service, 451 Research Market Insight. Forward-looking M&A analysis and perspectives on strategic acquisitions and the liquidity environment for technology companies are also updated regularly via Market Insight, which is backed by the industry-leading 451 Research M&A KnowledgeBase. Emerging technologies and markets are also covered in additional 451 Research channels, including Business Applications; Cloud and IT Services Markets; Data Platforms and Analytics; Datacenter Technology; Development, DevOps and IT Ops; Enterprise Mobility; European Services; Information Security; Internet of Things; Mobile Telecom; Multi-Tenant Datacenters; Networking; Service Providers; Storage; and Systems and Software Infrastructure. Beyond that, 451 Research has a robust set of quantitative insights covered in products such as ChangeWave, Voice of the Enterprise, Market Monitor, the M&A KnowledgeBase and the Datacenter KnowledgeBase. All of these 451 Research services, which are accessible via the Web, provide critical and timely analysis specifically focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. For more information about 451 Research, please go to: V

6 Table of Contents TRENDS 1 TREND 1: TIGHT BUDGETS WILL ERODE THE STORAGE STATUS QUO 1 THE DECLINE OF HIGH-END STORAGE THE EMERGENCE OF CLOUD STORAGE THE RISE OF HYPERCONVERGED PLATFORMS Figure 1: Storage Budgets Are Mostly Flat or Declining RECOMMENDATIONS WINNERS LOSERS TREND 2: FLASH WILL MAKE CAPACITY GAINS AS ALL-FLASH ARRAYS BECOME MAINSTREAM STORAGE 3 FLASH CAPACITY CONTINUES TO EXPAND AFAS RISE INTO THE MAINSTREAM Figure 2: Flash in Hybrids Lead in Adoption, Plans for AFAs Are Increasing Figure 3: AFAs Are Being Used for Consolidation RECOMMENDATIONS WINNERS LOSERS TREND 3: DATA PROTECTION INNOVATION WILL BLAZE THE PATH TO HYBRID CLOUD STORAGE 6 CLOUD-BASED DISASTER RECOVERY CONTINUES TO RISE Figure 4: Recovery, Retention and Complexity Are Leading Pain Points RECOMMENDATIONS WINNERS LOSERS VI

7 2016 TRENDS IN STORAGE TREND 4: HYPERCONVERGENCE WILL LEAP INTO THE LIMELIGHT 8 THE RISE OF HYPERCONVERGENCE Figure 5: Organizations Are Looking To Move Toward Software-Defined Datacenters RECOMMENDATIONS WINNERS LOSERS THE LONG VIEW 11 FURTHER READING 12 INDEX OF COMPANIES 13 VII