Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Personalization and Flexibility Take Center Stage
By
Ben Gitenstein, VP of Products and Solutions at Qumulo
Reflecting on the past year, one of the
biggest themes to emerge is flexibility. Whether it's keeping ransomware
attacks at bay or picking a cloud plan that fits your budget - customers
deserve solutions that are personalized to their needs. Sharing some thoughts
on my predictions for 2022 below.
With
ransomware attacks at an all-time high, security solutions will evolve to be a
no-brainer: simple and always on.
In 2022, having a product that is simple to
run in a secure fashion will be critical. Any well-developed application will
put security at the forefront, so that enterprises can keep their data as
secure as possible by default. Next year and beyond, security will be seen as a
more proactive asset rather than a reactive one. In order to protect data systems
against malicious actors, we'll see more enterprises integrate data protection
and backup within its cohesive IT infrastructure.
The
data industry will see more customer demand for the "verticalization of cloud,"
or vertical-specific cloud solutions.
Customers want solutions, not technology. In
other words, they want to buy "off the shelf" products instead of building
blocks. As capabilities in the cloud continue to grow in 2022 and more data
moves to the cloud, savvy cloud players will recognize the customer demand for
vertical-specific solutions that fit the needs of their industry. Customers
won't need to assemble a bunch of building blocks in order to have solutions
that are uniquely valuable to their business, because verticalization will do that
for them - and these may even evolve to something that's more customizable
in the long term.
In
2022, cloud performance won't be sacrificed for cost.
Cloud cost optimization continued to be a hot
topic in 2021, and cloud adoption won't slow down in 2022. But even as
organizations accelerate into the cloud, their budgets don't keep up - and
customers are wary of the potential to rack up an unexpected bill. Cost will be
a major concern for customers who want to embrace the benefits of cloud
computing, but want to avoid the pitfalls of overpaying for cloud storage on
providers like AWS. The path forward in 2022 will be to optimize cloud costs by
evaluating both cost and performance. Instead of settling for hidden costs and
complex pricing structures, cloud customers will get savvier about choosing
affordable, high-performing solutions.
Storage
will shift from static to dynamic, in order to bring data to life.
Storage used to be more static, meaning
enterprises could throw all of their data in a server and never touch it again.
In 2022, customers will leverage data-intensive workflows, like medical image
processing and predictive analytics, that demand huge amounts of available data
at all times. Instead of leaving data alone in cold storage (or spending an
unreasonable amount of money and computing power to warm it up again), storage
technologies will evolve so that you can access as much data as you want at any
given moment. In 2022, customers and IT teams will demand more flexible and
dynamic storage solutions. We predict the industry will see an increase in
active archive data solutions, so that even "cold" data can still be easily
brought back to life.
Conclusion
Cutting edge startups and big-name pioneers
can no longer be confined to cut-and-paste solutions. Every company's data
tells a different story, and with flexible, personalized tools, the
possibilities for innovation are endless. I predict innovation to soar into
2022 as the tech industry continues to create solutions that meet customers exactly
where they are, with exactly what they need.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Gitenstein is Vice President of Product
Management at Qumulo. He and his team of product managers and data scientists
have conducted nearly 1,000 interviews with storage users and analyzed millions
of data points to understand customer needs and the direction of the storage
market. Prior to working at Qumulo, Ben spent five years at Microsoft, where he
split his time between Corporate Strategy and Product Planning.