What are the trends in data storage in 2020?
With storage industry experts looking at 2020, most analysts expect the data storage market to grow stronger than 2019. The key storage trends that have been shaping the market for several years will continue, and new technologies will drive the price of storage products down further, bringing new opportunities to more businesses.
2019 is a mixed year for the storage market. This year's statistics have not yet been released, but the survey report from research firm IDC stated that the global storage market ’s total spending in the first and second quarters of this year declined slightly, and in the third quarter of the world, corporate external storage system spending increased by 1.3% . Total storage capacity shipments are increasing every quarter, and business demand for data storage continues to grow.
In some parts of the world (especially Asia), enterprise storage business has grown strongly, while sales in the US and Europe have stagnated. Economic and political uncertainty has led many IT managers to take a cautious approach to buying in 2019. However, many market researchers believe that this situation may change in 2020.
Storage Expenditure Forecast
Analysts expect that overall global IT spending growth will accelerate by 2020, which will be good news for storage vendors. Gartner expects IT spending to increase by 3.7% next year, up from 0.4% this year. John David Lovelock, vice president of research at Gartner, said, "Despite concerns about the recession and corporate cuts in discretionary IT spending, the slowdown in IT spending in 2019 is not expected to continue until 2020."
For suppliers, Dell Technologies continues to maintain its market dominance. It has captured about a third of the enterprise storage market in 2019, and other vendors have a long way to go to catch up. The more interesting part of the enterprise storage competition is the second place in the market. NetApp and HPE have very close market shares.
Research firm Forrester believes that 2020 will be a crucial year for data strategy, which will lead to a significant increase in data storage and data management spending. It stated in its "2020 Forecast" survey report: "Companies that want to push more information to the cloud and take advantage of edge computing are also paying attention to a new reality that the transaction costs of data processing and movement will exceed the storage itself cost. Industry-leading companies will understand the benefits of using all of these methods correctly and double or triple their data strategy budgets to outperform competitors. "
Automated data management
As machine learning and artificial intelligence become more and more closely integrated with various enterprise applications, enterprises have also begun to apply these technologies to data management. Among the top 10 data and analysis trends in 2020, Gartner analysts noted, "Due to skills shortages, data has grown exponentially and companies need to automate data management tasks. Suppliers are adding machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities To enable the data management process to self-configure and self-adjust, enabling highly skilled technicians to focus on higher-value tasks. "
Similarly, ESG's Christophe Bertrand states: "Intelligent data management or intelligent reuse of data will become more common in 2020. We believe that those who have successfully transformed their platforms to include tools and workflows to make compatible data sharing become Easier suppliers will gain a lasting advantage in the market. "
SSD hard drives and flash arrays
Looking forward to 2020, people will continue to pay attention to the development trend of flash memory arrays, although the growth rate may slow down, because many enterprises have upgraded traditional storage systems, in which the conversion to solid-state hard disk is the most cost-effective. According to IDC's "Global Enterprise Storage System Quarterly Tracking" survey report, in the third quarter of this year, in order to respond to the downward trend in the hybrid flash array (HFA) and HDD hard disk markets, it is necessary to achieve double-digit annual sales of all-flash array (AFA) Strong growth. "
This trend is partly due to its continued decline in prices and partly due to increased manufacturing capacity. South Korea's Hynix company started to produce 128-layer 4D NAND flash memory this year, which will bring greater downward pressure on the prices of large-capacity solid-state drives and flash memory arrays.
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is still very important, but the cloud computing environment is changing. Increasing public cloud costs and cost management difficulties are leading some companies to move to more hybrid storage models.
In the "Data Storage Forecast 2020" published by the Enterprise Strategy Group, senior analyst Scott Sinclair noted that most enterprises will move workloads from at least one public cloud back to their on-premises data centers during 2019. He said, "For a long time, people have always thought that eventually all IT is based on the public cloud, and this perception is gradually disappearing. Hybrid cloud infrastructure is the de facto standard for modern IT. And for digital enterprises, data is Grow at a similar rate. In other words, internal infrastructure will be an important part of IT for the foreseeable future. "
Sinclair predicts that at least one public cloud storage provider will acquire a hybrid or local data storage company in the coming year. He also expressed the hope that more IT teams will be able to integrate teams that manage local and cloud storage and invest in tools such as Kubernetes to simplify the management of mixed workloads.
Over the past few years, IT infrastructure has become software-defined, and this trend is certainly not going away anytime soon. The survey report indicates that by 2020, the global software-defined storage market may be worth as much as $ 7 billion.
Bruce Milne, vice president and chief marketing officer of IT service management agency Pivot3, notes, "The hybrid trend of cloud computing and software-defined storage is inherently connected. As our industry moves forward in 2020, a new category will Seizing the essence of software-defined everything, I believe this will be the concept of a hybrid cloud. Hardware is still required, but it can be used anywhere; software will continue to coordinate the growing complexity, so that by 2020 Location will no longer matter. "
Hyper-converged storage
The growth of hybrid cloud and software-defined infrastructure has also led to higher demand for hyper-converged storage. Vendors like Cisco, Dell, and HPE are all advertised that hyper-converged storage is ideal for multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and software-defined storage environments, and many businesses are buying it. According to survey data from Mordor Intelligence, the hyper-converged infrastructure market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 13%, and this growth rate will continue until 2024.
The trend of edge computing is also encouraging the use of hyper-converged storage. Because hyperconverged devices are easier to manage than traditional storage arrays, they are ideal for remote offices and retail locations. The survey found that it is often more cost-effective to do some storage and processing at the edge of the network instead of transferring everything to the public cloud.
Storage security
Gartner analysts said that by 2020, storage security (especially cloud storage security) spending will continue to climb. Today's complex geopolitical environment pushes compliance to the top priorities of enterprises. Overall security spending in 2019 will increase by 10.5%, and cloud security is expected to grow by 41.2% in the next five years.
A related trend is the need for reliable data. In fact, Gartner has included data transparency and traceability among the top ten strategic technology trends of 2020. Business leaders and consumers are increasingly skeptical of machine learning algorithms used to analyze data. As a result, data and storage managers are facing increasing demands not only to prove that their data is secure, but also to prove that the data is reliable and has been collected, stored, and processed.
New storage trends and technologies
Several major trends such as data analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have driven the demand for greater storage capacity. IDC states, "For example, traditional server / storage spending is taking an increasing share, driven by workloads associated with deploying these new technologies in the backend."
To keep up, companies are always looking for new technologies that can help them store and process more data faster. Analysts predict that technologies such as in-memory and persistent-memory databases, data structures, and graph databases will become increasingly important in the coming year.
Gartner analyst Rita Sallam advises: "Data and analytics leaders should actively monitor, experiment, or deploy emerging technologies. Don't just react when trends mature."
By taking proactive steps, IT managers can help transform data storage from what is considered a cost center into a real advantage for business competition.
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