WW Flash-Based Array Market Hits $11.3 Billion in 2014 – IDC

The storage industry continues to evolve and the flash-based array market – including all-flash arrays (AFAs) and hybrid flash arrays (HFAs) – is showing explosive growth.

According to new research from International Data Corporation, the emergence of more robust offerings that can handle a wide range of increasingly complex workloads helped drive the worldwide flash-based array market to $11.3 billion in 2014.

The impact that flash-based arrays will have on the datacenter is undeniable as more flash-based platforms are delivering enterprise data services, including snapshots, clones, encryption, replication, and QoS as well as storage efficiency features.

Once dominated by storage start-ups looking to carve out a niche with flash-optimized solutions, the promise of flash in the datacenter is driving traditional enterprise storage vendors, such as Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and Oracle, to all get on board and offer flash-optimized HFAs, and in some cases AFAs.

“Vendors are aggressively flash optimizing their offerings to provide improved performance, longer endurance, higher reliability, and a lower effective cost per gigabyte,” said Eric Burgener, research director, storage systems. “The most successful vendors will be those that can make a smooth transition from the traditional, dedicated application model to mixed workload consolidation.”

Additional findings from the research include:

• Start-up revenue leaders in the flash-based array space include Nimble Storage (an HFA supplier), Pure Storage, and SolidFire.
• The worldwide HFA and AFA segments will reach $10.0 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively, in 2014.
• To be successful, flash-based array vendors must have a flash-optimized platform that offers in-line compression and de-duplication as well as other enterprise data services.
• End users should strongly consider flash-based arrays when retiring existing enterprise storage platforms.

The IDC Special Study, Worldwide All-Flash Array and Hybrid Flash Array 2014-2018 Forecast and 1H14 Vendor Shares (IDC #252304, $25,000), provides detailed insights into the rapidly growing market for enterprise storage systems that leverage flash storage media.

Companies covered: Nimble Storage, Inc., EMC Corporation, Kaminario, Inc., Violin Memory, Inc., SolidFire, IBM, Hitachi, Ltd., NetApp, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, and Pure Storage, Inc.