Software defined storage
Storage Transformation Journey Is Well Under Way
Storage in the data center is evolving rapidly, but solution providers should note that the transformation to SDS is happening at a more deliberate pace.
Investments in Software-Defined Storage
A full 81% are investing in virtual SANs, while 72 percent are investing in storage virtualization in 2015.
Business Drivers for Software-Defined Storage
Just over half (52%) cited extending the life of existing storage and/or future-proofing storage infrastructure. Just under half (49%) cited lower costs and avoiding vendor lock-in. Meanwhile, 45% want simpler management.
Primary Reasons for Adopting Storage Virtualization
Why adopt storage virtualization? 52% cited adding storage capacity without business disruption, followed by high availability and disaster recovery, each cited by 49%.
Storage Virtualization Surprises
Determining actual storage requirements (34%) and slower storage performance (31%) were the top two most common challenges.
Causes of Application Performance Issues
A full 61% blame the application itself while 46% cited legacy storage devices and 22% pointed to incompatible storage devices.
Causes of Application or Data Center Outages
Human error was most commonly cited by 61%, followed by HVAC failure at a more distant 36%.
Amount of Storage Capacity Assigned to Flash
More than half (53%) still have less than 10 percent of their data running on flash storage. But 33% have 10% to 30% of their data on flash storage.
Hyperconverged System Adoption
Nearly half (45%) said they are evaluating hyperconverged platforms; 21% said they are doing so to consolidate storage, compute and networking.
Public/Hybrid Cloud Adoption
Nearly half (47%) are also evaluating public/hybrid cloud storage offerings. Disaster recovery (17%) and backup (16%) were cited as most significant reasons why.
Private Cloud Storage Adoption
57% are evaluating private cloud storage platforms, with business agility (19%) and a shift to self-service IT (18%) cited as top reasons for making the shift.
Where Budget Dollars Aren’t Flowing
The top areas where IT firms don’t plan to spend money in 2015 include OpenStack (70%), followed by public cloud (55%) and both big data storage and object storage (each at 50%).
Major Tech Disappointments
Nearly a quarter (24%) cited a failure to save money on cloud storage, while 21% cited the performance of hyperconverged systems.