Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Steve Pao, CMO, Igneous Systems
Software is Dead. Long Live Services.
2017 was a big year for secondary storage and
for Igneous as we've expanded beyond object storage to backup and archive
solutions, but we're already looking forward to 2018. Here are the changes we
see coming next year.
Software is dead, long live services:
The trend of "software-defined" is no longer
relevant as the industry moves toward everything offered as-a-service. The vast
majority of software is now delivered as-a-service. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 80% of software
vendors will change their business model from traditional license and
maintenance to subscription.
For example, enterprise software, including
CRM software like Salesforce and HRM software like Workday, as well as personal
software, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud, are delivered
as-a-service. In fact, you probably have a better IT infrastructure in your
personal life than in your datacenter due to the services provided with your
software, so it's time we focus on services - not just software in the
datacenter.
Data management strategies will evolve as
unstructured data growth continues:
While structured (or "block") data storage
grows at 19.6%, unstructured file and object data storage grows at a rate of
29.8%, according to a 2017 IDC study. This disparity is due to the fact that
block storage generally consists of data stored on legacy database and
application servers, while unstructured file and object data is utilized by
more modern applications.
We have seen unstructured file data continue
to outpace the growth of block data in 2017 and expect this trend to continue.
This rapid data growth means organizations need to evolve their data management
strategies to effectively handle unstructured data.
"Cloud sobriety" will be delayed:
Chris Dagdigian of Bio-Team has predicted that
enterprises will reach "cloud sobriety" as they realize that cloud spending is
higher than expected. In other words, the initial enthusiasm for cloud will
eventually give way to logic as enterprises evaluate their spending. As Dagdigian said
in our CrowdChat on hybrid cloud, "'cloud sobriety' is a real thing.
Once you get that $300,000 monthly storage bill it looks a lot more attractive
to retreat back to a more pragmatic hybrid model."
However, we predict that cloud sobriety will
be delayed as C-level executives won't aggressively assess hard dollar costs of
cloud in 2018. The business benefits of cloud may also make the potentially
higher costs worth it for enterprises.
The number of backup admins cannot grow with
the rate of data:
While overall jobs in backup are growing, the
traditional view of having a certain headcount per petabyte is not scalable or
economical. We asked participants in our first CrowdChat, about when data can't move
offsite, how many heads it takes to manage data on-premises. Aaron Cardenas, CEO of P1 Technologies, said
for primary storage it takes around 1 person per 500TB and for secondary
storage it takes 1 person per 3-4 PB. As data grows exponentially, enterprises
will need to seek efficiency through third party service providers.
The job of the backup admin is changing:
As more enterprises recruit third party
services to help manage their growing data, the job of the backup admin will
evolve. As services streamline IT tasks, IT will have more bandwidth to work
with end user groups to understand their needs. For example, an Igneous
customer found that using our backup solution freed up time for several
people in their IT department, including the IT manager.
"[Backups] are one less thing on their list
that they have to deal with," Igneous Field Product Engineer Andy Pernsteiner.
"Because we're good at managing the backups for them, it makes it so they don't
have to worry about it anymore."
Since third party services like Igneous make
it easier for end users or application owners to access secondary data, IT will
have to adjust to this new dynamic and the different kind of support end users
will need.
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About
the Author
Steve is CMO at
Igneous. Prior to Igneous, Steve was an early executive through two IPOs - as
VP of Product Management at Latitude Communications (now part of Cisco), and as
SVP and GM of the Security Business at Barracuda Networks.