Contributed by Paul Nashawaty, Product Evangelist & Director of Technical Marketing, DataCore Software

This sixth annual survey from DataCore Software explores the impact of major software-driven storage deployments within IT organizations across the globe. In the 2017 edition of the survey, the expectations and experiences of over 426 IT professionals who are currently using or evaluating software-defined storage (SDS), hyperconverged and cloud storage provided their responses to survey questions around how they are solving their most critical data storage challenges. The results yield surprising and unique insights from a cross-section of industries over a wide range of workloads.

Exploring Gartner's Top 5 Use Cases for Software-Defined Storage   

Gartner's Top Five Use Cases and Benefits of Software-Defined Storage report states similar business cases in its research with the statement that "I&O leaders are looking for software-defined storage (SDS) products that offer the potential for better total cost of ownership (TCO), efficiency, and scalability to address exponential-data growth needs and to benefit from innovations from hardware and software players independently.

In alignment with this study, Gartner also predicts that by 2019, approximately 30% of the global storage array capacity installed in enterprise data centers will be deployed with software-defined storage or hyperconverged integrated system architectures based on x86 hardware systems, a significant increase from less than 5% today.

The survey respondents were asked: "What are the business drivers for implementing software-defined storage?" Their results showed:

• 55% want to simplify management of different storage systems
• 53% are looking for a future-proof infrastructure
• 52% are looking to avoid hardware vendor lock-in
• 47% are looking to extend the life of existing storage investments

Research firm Neuralytix recommends that "All organizations need to include software-defined storage as part of their forward-looking IT planning." Additionally, Neuralytix estimates that an SDS investment is likely to last for approximately10 years.

Adoption of SDS, Hyperconverged and Cloud Storage Have Been Slow

Challenges and false starts with technologies have introduced reluctance in the industry to fully commit to software-defined, hyperconverged or a hybrid data storage infrastructure. Until recently, the promise of cloud, ease of use, and faster application performance have fallen short of expectations.

In the 2017 DataCore SDS survey, 31% of respondents stated that the promise of reducing costs by moving to the cloud increased costs. This was largely due to management and resource management.

29% of respondents found management was more difficult and 16% stated flash technology failed to accelerate application performance.

Predicted Adoption Rate of Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Along with SDS, a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is another focal point in this year's survey.  With many different definitions from Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and other analysts, DataCore's definition of hyperconvergence is validated by majority of survey respondents:   

• 41% Tightly integrated with hypervisor but hardware agnostic
• 27%  Integrated appliance (hardware and software locked together)
• 17%  Hardware and software that you put together and update independently
• 12%  Hardware and software bundle that can be updated independently

By understanding how the responders view HCI, 34% are strongly considering deploying this type of solution.  This is also validated by IDC, which states that hyperconverged sales grew 148.0% year-over-year during the first quarter of 2016, generating $371.88 million worth of sales. Gartner said the market for hyperconverged integrated systems (HCIS) is predicted to  grow 79 percent to reach almost $2 billion, propelling it toward mainstream use in the next five years.

What are the compelling reasons? Simplify management, ease of use, and reduce hardware cost. focused on the database (34%), data center consolidation (28%) and enterprise applications (28%).

Predicted Adoption Rate and Inhibitors of Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud adoption is a key factor in in this year's survey.  However, several factors are creating hesitation. Over half of the respondents stated that security and sensitive data are the main reasons not to move to the cloud. This year's survey explored which types of applications users were willing move to a public cloud or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Again, the top answer was that for 47% of them, none of the applications are going to a public cloud or hybrid cloud, but 33% responded with select enterprise applications (such as, Salesforce), followed by data analytics at 22%; databases at 21% and VDI at 16%. Many respondents pointed out that they are being very selective on which workloads they would run on public cloud infrastructures based on security, cost, and performance concerns.

DataCore's State of Software-Defined Storage, Hyperconverged and Cloud Storage survey was designed to explore the impact of major software-driven storage deployments within organizations across the globe. The survey was conducted in late 2016 through April 2017 and distills the expectations and experiences of 426 IT professionals who are currently using or evaluating software-defined storage, hyperconverged, and cloud storage to solve critical data storage challenges.

"

DataCore makes you think differently

about storage and ultimately is the

next step in virtualization

"

An Efficient, Proven Storage Management Solution Does Exist

The DataCore solution portfolio has addressed these challenges head on.  In fact, a Corey Nelson, IT Manager, Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon, is a DataCore fan.

He says, "DataCore makes you think differently about storage and ultimately is the next step in virtualization. DataCore Hyperconverged Virtual SAN gives us the flexibility, reliability and performance to keep our systems running nonstop. No other products I looked at were even close to accomplishing this."

For more information try a FREE SDS trial or HCI trial to maximize your IT's infrastructure performance, availability and utilization.