IDC: Top Ten
Storage Predictions for 2009.[url=/weblogs/roller-ui/blog/whchamb@us.ibm.com]Bill Chamberlin[/url] whchamb@us.ibm.com 13 Jan
IDC has published their list of the top ten predictions for the Storage industry in 2009:
Appetite for storage has been growing as the web 2.0 has evolved from the consumer world to the business world. The economic situation will be a bump in the road perhaps, but I don't think a big bump. In fact, based on what I read, storage will probably be one area that will not be hit as hard in 2009.
Here is my summary of IDC's 2009 storage predictions.
- Impact of Economy. Challenging economic times in 2009, no sign of slowing content creation. IDC notes that overall, IT spend will decline this year as the economy is to blame. They do point out that except for a couple of areas (internal storage and tape), storage will do better than other areas of IT as users continue to create more and more content.
- Virtualizaton. Block virtualization and thin provisioning goes from interesting to must have. Virtulization will continue to drive customer discussions as it offers a way to get more storage without spending allot more. Thin provisioning, which lets administrators assign storage capacity to a new application without having to figure out how much it ultimately will need, helps make better use of resources. IDC expects suppliers with networked-based virtualization products that boost efficiency on previously installed systems will do very well in other wise difficult times.
- Data De-duplication. Customers get ahead of storage suppliers in use of data de-duplication technologies. Look for new versions of de-duplication-based storage platforms tuned to met very different performance loads.
- Tiered Storage. IDC says that tiers for content with file virtualization will go mainstream. Expect budget pressed organizations to look for solutions that deliver simplified and efficient management of data among the storage tiers so that companies extract as much benefit as possible from their tiered storage environments.
- Green Storage. "Greening" of storage remains a complex story. For most companies, reduced energy consumption is a long term bonus, not the force driving near term spending decisions. Those companies doing a major data center overhaul will, however, actively pursue and embrace sophisticated power saving technologies.
- Universal Storage Systems. Modularity and serverization drive development of universal storage. IDC expects to see the introduction of a wide range of "universal" storage systems with a design focus based on system density, compute capacity, and flexible interconnect.
- Standardizing on SAS. SAS emerges as the standard storage interconnect within systems. IDC expects that by 2010, we will see the wholesale conversion of modular storage systems (including all of the new massive scale-out systems) to the SAS interface for disk connections.
- Growth in SSD. SSD takes another step foreword as technology advances and aggressive pricing spur further interest. IDC expects many of the enterprise SSD deployments in 2009 to be more targeted in areas such as video streaming and virtual image serving where SSDs can deliver immediate performance benefits.
- Changes in Vendor Landscape. Major consolidation and reshuffling of storage software landscape. IDC expects a surge in mergers and acquisitions in storage software as traditional leaders, taking advantage of VC's increased focus on early stage funding and weak equity markets, seek to rebalance portfolios of profitable but sluggish products, with a new pool of faster growing products.
- Home Storage Industry Grows. Start of successful attack on SMB storage through the home. IDC predicts that with continued tight economic times, small business customers will increasingly turn to home storage solutions for their small businesses, even though these may not have all the "sophisticated" storage functions suppliers assume businesses want an need.
A big part of the 2009 story for storage is the virtualization of storage, which like server virtualization, became a mainstream technology in 2008. Storage vendors are offering more virtualization products and seeing more demand for them. Expect there to be some attention in the storage industry, even in a down economy.
