90% Preferred Software Over Appliances for Object Storage Solutions

A survey sent by Caringo, Inc. to customers, partners and prospects, sheds some light on object storage use by global companies, and revealed perceptions of its value, including scalability, data protection and compliance.

Survey respondents represented organizations with data sets of multiple sizes: 10 to 100TB (38%), 100 to 500TB (24%), 500TB to 1PB (12%), and more than 1PB (26%).

Survey results also revealed a strong inclination toward software-based object storage solutions over appliances, with 90% saying they preferred software and only 10% prefer an appliance-based object storage system.

These preferences also add context to the number of users who said it was either "important" or "very important" to choose their own hardware, expressed by 61%, compared to 8% who said this was not important.

Along with these preferences, a significant number (58%) felt conserving electrical power (e.g. through adaptive power conservation features) was either "important" or "very important." Not surprisingly, object storage software with power-saving features, deployed on the user’s choice of hardware, affords the greatest potential for power conservation.

An overwhelming number (98%) see value in object storage, but when asked to name actual or perceived benefits, responses varied widely with the exception of scalability – mentioned by 86% of respondents. Among other benefits listed, 66% said data protection/security, 56% said providing access to cloud data stores, 54% ease of use or maintenance, and 34% meeting compliance goals.

In related questions about the use and applications for object storage in their own environments, more than 71% listed active archiving, 53% cloud storage, 41% big storage, and about 30% each compliance or DR.

Regarding current and/or planned use of object storage for compliance, the top ranked features were WORM capability (68%), content integrity seal/the ability to prove a file hasn’t been altered (66%), and the ability to audit file access (62%).