70% of Big Enterprises Across AsiaPac Have or Plan to Deploy All-Flash Arrrays – IDC

EMC Corporation, shared the findings from IDC Corp.‘s recently concluded survey on the role of flash in driving business transformation in the Digital Age.

The survey, led by IDC, takes a closer look at the priorities impacting AsiaPac (APAC) and Japan (APJ) businesses and the role of technology in supporting this. Reducing time to market for new products and services and reduction in enterprise hardware budget emerged as top priorities in APAC. In addition, the top two business drivers for flash were faster time to market (agility) and new channels of delivery and engagement such as eCommerce/mCommerce.
 
The research targeted infrastructure decision makers across 700+ enterprises with at least 100TBs of primary storage. The respondents were from a group of 6 countries: Australia, India, Japan, Korea, China and Singapore.

Against the backdrop of an increasingly complex business landscape, the study identified that top reasons business leaders initiate digital transformation of business processes and business models are to:

• Quickly bring to market new products and services (74.9%);
• Build deeper understanding of customers’ buying preferences (74.6%); and,
• Improve the quality and response time of post-sales services (61.5%).

To support business transformation, IDC’s AFA (All-Flash Arrays) research shows that more than 70% of the organizations surveyed across AsiaPac have already deployed AFA storage systems and/or plan to use them in the next 12 months. Organizations surveyed by IDC in India emerged as strong early adopters of all-flash array (AFA) storage systems, with 21.3% of the organizations having the systems in production.
 
Confidence in business leaders that AFA’s can enable business agility and accelerate business performance was also high: 89% of respondents confident in exploiting AFA to generate significant business innovation today or in the future.
 

Lastly, the top drivers for adopting AFA were cited as:

• Reducing storage capex spend (69%)
• Reducing product development cycles/ quick-to-market (68%)
• Supporting larger numbers of customers, partners and suppliers (63%).

Optimal utilisation of resources to drive cost down is one of the top three business imperatives that are being driven by digital transformation of business processes and business model in Indian organisations. New channels of delivery and engagement (eCommerce/mCommerce) are also few of the most significant drivers for AFA adoption.
 
“Operational efficiency, cost optimization and market expansion are the top three strategic imperatives for businesses in AsiaPac, based on IDC’s C-Suite Barometer survey in 2015,” said Rajnish Arora, VP, enterprise computing, IDC AsiaPac. “”All-Flash Storage systems not only drive cost optimization but help drive business transformation and innovation which are the cornerstones for success in IDC’s 3rd Platform era. Mr. Arora said that flash will enable IT to deliver new capabilities to business that will enable them to become much more predictive than reactive in the increasingly hyper-competitive business environment.”
 
Dmitri Chen, COO, EMC AsiaPac and Japan, said: “In today’s business environment, executives face an unprecedented level of complexity. On top of this, the pressure to produce faster and innovate quicker is increasing. Access to real-time analytics with quicker decision support and real-time development is key, making AFA one of the fastest growing segments. In fact, customers of our AFA Solution, XtremIO, are dramatically reducing development time and driving down costs, achieving the agility they need to remain competitive.”
 
Surajit Sen, country manager – specialty business, EMC, said: “In today’s world of fast pace business models, it is imperative for organizations to digitally transform themselves. Existing computing models are falling apart due to their inability to deliver on the scale and speed required for this transformation. This is forcing them to look for alternatives. tremIO the AFA solution from EMC has been able to help customers reduce costs, drive their businesses with more agility and be more competitive in this demanding business environment. Business verticals such as BFSI, eCommerce/mCommerce, IT/ITES and software development have been among the early adopters, however other verticals are fast joining them in the adoption of AFA.”