Software Defined Storage Critical Missing Link for Cloud and Software Defined Datacenter

Virsto Software Corp., provider of VM-centric software defined storage, announced that research from Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. (EMA), an IT and data management research and consulting firm, supports the need for more intelligent, high performance and hardware independent storage hypervisors to realize the potential of truly software defined datacenters.

The provisioning and management of storage
          is a significant cost bottleneck
     within our private cloud deployment.

The new Demystifying Cloud research from EMA identified the cost of acquiring and provisioning storage as a major pain point when implementing cloud technologies on the path to the software defined datacenter.

As part of the research, 52% of companies identified "easy storage provisioning" as the number one strategic goal for cloud projects in the mid-market, and the third most important goal across companies of all sizes. The research also showed that hardware dependency leads to wasted capacity: 25% of large enterprises adopting cloud have purchased more storage capacity to resolve performance bottlenecks, contributing to a cycle of waste for valuable enterprise IT resources.

Nearly all organizations (99%) that have adopted a hardware independent storage hypervisor view it as critical, very important or important to their private cloud deployment. The EMA research validates the value the storage hypervisor delivers to truly software defined storage, the missing link for successful cloud deployments and the future of the software defined datacenter.

Virsto’s storage hypervisor offers features that meet the storage requirements for cloud and the software defined datacenter. These features are decoupled from an organization’s storage hardware arrays to allow the entire enterprise storage infrastructure to be pooled, tiered and more efficiently assigned to the virtual environment. The VM-centric and cloud-aware storage hypervisor centrally and intelligently manages storage provisioning and performance across the datacenter, delivering value data services to each individual VM.

"In our recent cloud research Demystifying Cloud, 2013, EMA found that the pace of cloud adoption is accelerating. However, our research shows that significant hurdles remain to achieve the vision of the software defined datacenter. In particular, the cost, provisioning and performance of storage was cited by a large portion of respondents as critical impediments to cloud projects. Virsto delivers truly differentiated software defined storage for virtual machines through its storage hypervisor software. Therefore, Virsto could be the missing link to deliver on the promise of the software defined datacenter vision," said Torsten Volk, senior research analyst, EMA. "The storage hypervisor approach is core to software defined storage and the complete realization of the software defined datacenter."

"Storage has suffered in the hardware-dependent datacenter world, and separating the software from hardware dependencies opens the possibility for greater agility and efficiency in the datacenter. The latest research from EMA demystifies the true roadblocks to successful cloud deployments and supports our vision for truly VM-centric software defined storage," said Mark Davis, CEO, Virsto.