Posted on Thursday, August 25, 2016 in storage hardware
A new report detailing the growth of the global software defined storage (SDS) industry has uncovered a number of interesting findings. As well as giving an insight into the current state of play, a number of bold predictions indicate that the SDS industry is about to explode.
Huge projected growth
According to MarketsandMarkets, who produced the report, the SDS market currently stands at $4.72 billion USD. Explosive compound annual growth will see this figure increase by 36.7 percent over the next five years to $22.56 billion in 2021.
Much of this growth is driven by the continuing need for cost-optimisation by businesses struggling with their ever expanding data storage requirements. This trend also echoes our own experiences here at CDS where we have seen increasing interest from customers keen to leverage additional value from existing assets as part of a software-defined data center future.
Dell and EMC lead the pack
In 2016 the SDS market is being led by Dell and EMC – a position that will be further consolidated once their long awaited merger finally completes. Somewhat worrying for Cisco, who recently announced the loss of 14,000 jobs as they refocus on a software-defined strategy, is that they do not appear anywhere in the top 10 vendor list. Instead established virtualization experts Citrix and VMware make an appearance.
Who is driving SDS growth
Somewhat surprisingly, SDS is experiencing its strongest growth in the healthcare sector. The need to store and process vast amounts of research and patient data is forcing CTOs to adopt new strategies capable of delivering improved flexibility and cost control.
Once again, the option of building a vendor-agnostic storage layer is hugely attractive, particularly as this approach allows for the redeployment of existing assets – including those officially classified as end of service life.
Once more businesses become aware of these major benefits, it may turn out that the 36 percent CAGR estimate is actually too conservative. And the fact that data growth will never slow down adds further weight to this argument.
CDS are in the process of organizing a free webinar on the importance of software defined storage – watch this space for more details as they are finalized.
For more help and advice, or for maintenance services for your existing data center in a box, please get in touch.
– See more at: http://www.cds.net/blog/2016/08/leading-sds-adoption/#sthash.ITCpBXme.dpuf