Flash-Based Approaches Increasingly Becoming Mainstream for Primary Storage

According to the results of 451 Research‘s Voice of the Enterprise survey, IT organizations are embracing a range of new, flash-optimized architectures as they continue to transform their storage infrastructures.

Overall, almost 90% of organizations now have some form of flash-based storage installed in their datacenters, while all-flash approaches are becoming increasingly standard to support transactional applications.

Key insights from the study:

• The most common method for deploying datacenter flash is as a tier in a hybrid SAN array, with just over half (51%) of organizations citing this implementation method as in use today, and a further 29% planning to deploy flash as a tier in the next two years.
• However, All-Flash Array (AFA) adoption is growing most rapidly, with 27% of enterprises having deployed this technology already, and a further 28% planning to deploy an AFA within the next two years.
• Three-quarters of AFA deployments support multiple applications, with only a quarter supporting single applications. The top two use cases for AFA deployments are databases and VDI, while data analytics is expected to be a top two use case within two years.
• Data-optimization efficiencies such as deduplication and compression are in use by a majority of organizations that have deployed flash; most respondents – 59% – said they gained between 2x and 5x space savings from using these technologies.
• The traditional storage vendors, led by EMC, dominate the AFA market today, though smaller specialists such as Pure Storage are still proving popular; a quarter of respondents say they are considering buying Pure Storage in 2016.
• A sizeable minority of organizations – 19% – is aggressively embracing flash-based storage to the extent that these organizations have already – or will over the next two years – entirely replaced HDD technology for SAN-based storage workloads.
• However, cost was highlighted as the largest single barrier to broader AFA adoption, with 51% saying AFAs are too expensive. A further 47% said their existing storage performance was sufficient as a reason for not purchasing an AFA.

“Organizations of all sizes are looking to transform their storage infrastructures to drive both improved performance and efficiency, and flash-based approaches are at the heart of this transformation,” said Simon Robinson, research VP at 451, and research director of the Voice of the Enterprise: Storage service. “While all-flash approaches have gained substantial momentum in recent years and will continue to grow in popularity, it’s also clear that many prospective buyers still view these solutions as cost-prohibitive. We expect these barriers to erode over time, but most enterprise decision-makers will continue to use a blend of flash and HDD-based storage technologies for the foreseeable future.”

The Voice of the Enterprise: Storage study focuses on end-user trends in enterprise storage. Based on research conducted with over 1,000 IT professionals worldwide, the quarterly study combines 451 Research’s analysis with responses from a panel of more than 30,000 senior IT buyers and enterprise technology executives. The Q1 survey focuses on storage workloads and key projects.