70% of Respondents Using Flash for Database-Driven Applications

Kaminario Technologies Ltd. announced the results of an online survey that demonstrates the critical role of all-flash storage, especially in business and IT transformation.

Nearly 70% of respondents reported using flash for database-driven applications with the most common benefits including application performance, data center efficiency and simplicity.

For over 80% of AFA users, it has been a good experience.
Less than 10% said it was not so great, or worse

Results show All-flash Array (AFA) technology also being used extensively to drive innovation through the building of cloud infrastructure, real time analytics and mobile apps.
  
Analyst firm Freeform Dynamics surveyed more than 300 IT professionals and mapped their experiences and expectations with all-flash.
                                       
“One of the insights gained from a recent Register readers survey is a clearer view of how AFA usage is evolving,” said Bryan Betts, principal analyst, Freeform Dynamics. “In addition to being enterprise-ready, all-flash is today’s ‘new normal’ and companies are leveraging it to drive business and IT transformation.”

“This report underscores what we’ve been hearing from our customers and why they rely on Kaminario K2 all-flash array to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” said Josh Epstein, CMO, Kaminario. “Businesses that are building cloud-scale applications are looking at all-flash as the transformational technolog that supports the requirements of modern data centers in today’s on-demand world.“

The survey identified a relationship between AFA adoption and investments in orchestration and automation solutions to manage cloud environments. Freeform Dynamics observed that AFA technologies have penetrated the broader storage market in three waves:

• The first wave of flash was positioned around accelerating point applications.
• The second wave elevated flash use to general purpose applications, enabling businesses to develop transformational software.
• The third wave advances AFAs to the critical foundation layer for private/hybrid clouds, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platforms and software-defined data centers.

Highlights from the report include:
A third wave is emerging: The majority of survey respondents currently using all-flash recognized opportunities around operational benefits in areas such as IT automation and reduced need for manual system tuning. The removal of I/O bottlenecks and the ability to respond to changing infrastructure demands autonomously through self-service storage management allows IT organizations to deliver better user experiences to the cloud scale applications they support.

Hybrid storage has been eclipsed: While there still are some areas where hybrid arrays are chosen, the survey shows that AFAs are becoming the dominant storage paradigm. This is a clear change from a year ago when users were more inclined to purchase a hybrid array or just a tier of SSDs to address specific performance issues. Even though database-driven applications are still the primary target for flash, more users than ever before are running the entire gamut of enterprise applications on AFAs.

All-flash arrays: a catalyst for transformation report (registration required)