Trends in Data Storage

By David Feller, vice president of product management and solutions engineering, Spectra Logic

The year 2021 will see storage vendors shift discussions to include how to integrate cloud workflows and take the long-term view of data storage while optimizing budgets.  New data storage lifecycle management capabilities will help organizations take further steps toward deriving value from their data, optimizing data placement for cost savings and leveraging a cloud environment.

The redefinition of hybrid cloud

A vital capability for 2021 will be for organizations to be free from cloud vendor lock-in. Innovative storage lifecycle management software makes it possible to put data in multiple places and between clouds, utilizing different hybrid workflows that can all work together. Organizations will recognize the importance of being discerning when it comes to committing to one cloud option (where prices can be raised after time or data can only be retrieved at great cost) and shutting down their data centers completely. Instead, organizations will embrace greater independence and cost savings from cloud lock-in with a local copy kept on-premise and one in the cloud for disaster recovery or cloud-specific workflows and compute.

In 2021 more organizations will recognize the freedom to choose where to put their data without compromise, the benefits of controlling their own data, and the ability to move between clouds. 2021 marks the start of commoditization of cloud storage and compute - leading to the redefinition of what hybrid cloud really means. Given hybrid storage management systems, customers will be able to dynamically choose data-locality and leverage optimum cost and performance between various onsite and multi-cloud options without having to settle.

Much like the decades-old "tape is dead" prediction, analysts who have been forecasting widespread data center closings have been proven wrong. Data centers may consolidate, but they are not going away. Whatever the market segment, organizations can create a workflow to utilize cloud in tandem with on-premise workflows. The perception here would be that the amount of work has been doubled. But in 2021 we will start to see deeper discussions on the new trend of cloud and on-premise integration as part of one workflow. It will be the task of organizations to understand how to manage multiple clouds as part of its workflows and integrate that with on-premise services for the long-term. This will be an exciting space to watch.

The role of Storage Lifecycle Management

Increased demand for improved data access, control, and protection in the long-term will drive interest in storage lifecycle management capabilities. By leveraging the two-tier storage model to "smartly" move data off of primary storage and onto perpetual storage, made up of lower cost disk, tape and cloud, customers will free up their expensive primary storage and, with less data sitting on the high-performance storage tier, more organizations will benefit from efficiency and performance improvements to the entire system. Backup, while critical for business continuity, is not required for perpetual storage, so backup windows will be substantially shorter, require less storage, and can be reduced, saving both time and money. Leveraging storage lifecycle management software will make data centers as a whole faster and more reliable as well as give the enterprise total access and control over the data it relies upon to bring value and drive the business.

The future of object storage

Object storage provides significant benefits but is still in the growth phase for widespread adoption. Users have been acclimated to file systems for over 30 years and, regardless of the business and technical benefits, it takes time for users to build comfort with new technologies. Given that all cloud systems and modern perpetual storage systems are object-based, the object storage world will  play a key role in the local data center as businesses look to the future and integration of cloud-based workflows. Object storage will become commonplace and intuitive, providing a huge boost to cloud and on-premise cloud architectures.  Object storage also maximizes the use of tape storage, which remains the industry's most economical method of storing vast amounts of data long-term.  The LTO tape roadmap now extends to LTO-12 and 144TB of capacity per tape, which will enable IT professionals to continue to deploy tape for its superior reliability, affordability and scalability as well as for its excellent air-gap protection against ransomware.

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About the Author

David Feller brings more than 25 years of engineering and marketing leadership experience to Spectra. As vice president of product management and solutions engineering, he merges the voice of the customer with market trends and technologies to create and drive a successful product portfolio for Spectra. David also oversees Spectra's external partnership development, client certification and client test programs.

Prior to Spectra, David was vice president of marketing for DVDO/Silicon Image, where he pioneered 4K and beyond HDMI technology systems.

Previous to that, he served as vice president of marketing for Cornice, a hard drive manufacturer that pioneered storage for early portable music players. He also held the position of chief marketing officer for BOCS, an in-home video distribution company, and was product line director at Harris Semiconductor where his group invented and brought to market the world's first WiFi solution.

David holds a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University.