2010 Enterprise IT Storage Trends
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, May 14, 2010 @ 10:10 AM
If the early signs are any indication, 2010 is turning out to be a time when enterprise IT, in general, starts to normalize after a long stretch involving financial instability. For many organizations, at least, enterprise storage upgrades and optimization are back on the table after a time away. Without the looming threat of a financial disaster, people in IT departments are willing to take some more risks with enterprise storage and other technologies.
Here are some of the trends that are beginning to emerge in that area:
• Virtualization continues to increase, creating more significant I/O requirements. Everything from VMware to vSphere to Microsoft’s Hyper-V is putting through the large amounts of data needed by database and by other applications. This means storage I/O has to keep up. How it will do so isn’t certain, but you can expect to see higher uses of SAN arrays, even for more low-end implementations.
• An increase of SANs among small and medium businesses. Even smaller businesses are turning more and more to virtualization. As they do, they need more robust, more intelligent SAN storage. Accordingly, the lower end of the enterprise storage market should continue to boom.
• More archiving. Data management and compliance are no longer the sole purview of big business. Archiving services, as well as in-house solutions, will continue to grow. Managed archiving services are likely to especially increase, as archiving hasn’t really ever been one of the core foci of the IT department.
• Special-purpose storage solutions integrating with applications. We’re seeing more and more storage solutions that integrate essential applications – SAP, SharePoint and Exchange being just a few.
• FC disks are coming to an end. Between flash disks and automated tiering technologies, SAS is set to put the nail in the coffin of more traditional high-performance disk drives. We’ll see larger capacity drives, more SAS, and higher amounts of cache RAM as well as flash.
• Tiered storage systems continue to grow. As virtualization merges more and more with cloud technology, more and more solutions will work to cash, manage performance and manage capacity. These super storage systems will combine cloud storage, flash and SAS as well.
• Convergence is still delayed. Yes, some of the big vendors (most notably Cisco and EMC) are continuing to push for converged networks and technologies like FCoE and 10 GigE, there are not yet significant business reasons to make the move for most folks. Those high-end I/O environments may see some 10 GigE implementations.
As has always been the case, the times are changing. Successful businesses and organizations continue to rely on the industry to provide cutting-edge solutions to their ever-growing needs.
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