Organizations are adopting more virtualized workloads and flash storage in hybrid data center environments, according to the 2017 State of Storage in Virtualization report released today by ActualTech Media and Tegile Systems. This and other findings from the survey suggest the increase in popularity of both virtualization and hybrid storage are inspired by a need for greater automation, reliability and faster access when it comes to business data and applications.

"Modern enterprises need data center infrastructure that can evolve at the pace of their business," said Scott D. Lowe, partner and cofounder of ActualTech Media. "For the second year in a row, this study has highlighted the immense role that both virtualization and hybrid storage play in moving enterprises' IT strategies into the future."

Notable findings from the survey include:

Dropbox and Cloud Storage Don't Reign Supreme. Implementation of cloud-based storage has been slower than expected, as virtualization continues to dominate the data center. In the context of file-sharing services for instance, enterprises prefer virtualization and retaining data in-house over cloud options.

• 57 percent of respondents have virtualized their file sharing services but have retained them in-house as opposed to adopting cloud-based software.
• Organizations are virtualizing other enterprise applications as well, including Microsoft SQL Server (71 percent), Microsoft Exchange (50 percent) and Microsoft Sharepoint (44 percent).
• 27 percent of organizations run nearly fully virtualized data center environment, up from 19 percent a year ago.

Hybrid Flash Storage Continues to Gain Traction. Hybrid flash storage systems are growing in popularity as enterprises realize capacity and performance gains without exorbitant costs.

• 55 percent of respondents are using hybrid storage systems - those that combine flash and spinning disk - compared to just 47 percent a year ago.
• The growth in hybrid storage comes at the expense of all-disk systems, which are falling out of favor, dropping from 41 percent of respondent environments in 2016 to 37 percent in Q1 2017.
• 2 percent of organizations have an entirely all-flash data center.

Organizations Turn to Storage for Faster Application Response Times. Deployment of all-flash or hybrid arrays are accelerating, with a need to improve application response times as the number one factor leading to its adoption.

• 72 percent of respondents cite improving application response times as a key driver for deploying flash or hybrid storage in the data center.
• The two largest drivers following application response time are improving end-user satisfaction (53 percent) and business growth/expansion (46 percent).
• More than one-half of respondents acquire more flash storage at least annually.

"Data is the bedrock of business success. As the amount and importance of data continues to surge, organizations are making massive changes to the data center," says Rohit Kshetrapal, CEO of Tegile. "Add to this enterprises' insatiable appetite for business velocity and the transformational impact of flash. This study shines a light on exactly how they're making those changes so that they can rapidly access and act on critical data."

Tegile Systems and ActualTech Media partnered to create this report, polling more than 700 IT professionals. To learn more, download the full report at www.tegile.com/survey.