FEATURE: STORAGE
W
e have been seeing a
decline in traditional
data storage arrays, high
performance hard disk drives (HDDs)
and tape storage, whereas newer
storage models are gaining wider
acceptance.
There is a major shift in how today’s
enterprise storage is being developed.
The focus is now on data management
with intelligent, software-based systems
that provide scalable, fast and reliable
data storage systems and enable
enterprises to concentrate on extracting
value from data rather than just
managing storage.
Enterprise Storage is continuing to be
the fastest growing technology and
it shows no signs of slowing down
any time soon. More businesses are
expected to invest huge amounts
of resources into their storage
infrastructures bringing in storage as
an essential requirement to all class
of business. The storage market is
witnessing increased uptake of entrylevel and midrange storage devices
driven by demand for the Networkattached storage (NAS) protocol.
Internet of Things, mobility, video
surveillance, BYOD and Big Data are the
key drivers for this ongoing shift within
the Middle East storage market.
The ever demanding application
speed and limiting speed of the disk,
has made enterprises move towards
solid state drives (SSDs), which can be
leveraged to speed up applications and
performance without the cost of adding
additional servers. The storage arrays
are fast becoming full solid state, where
the speeds will double every two years.
This will in turn see next-generation
solid state devices with higher
redundancy and write speeds.
Over the past few years, virtualisation
has been gaining momentum and
storage virtual machines are geared up
to provide application agility. Softwaredefined storage is another important
trend for companies looking to save
on costs on storage infrastructure and
most storage appliance vendors have
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INTELLIGENTCIO
announced SDS initiatives. OpenStack
will continue to gain this year as the
‘open’ alternative to commercial
products for data centres.
Other trends include heavier uptake of
flash storage, which provides a lowercost of ownership in performanceintensive environments and much
better performance apart from saving
on power and cooling; and hybrid
data storage systems, which not only
offer higher capacity but also greater
performance. Enterprise storage
systems are becoming more hybridised
wherein the data is tiered in many
places in a box and then finally sent to
the cloud.
Enterprises are increasingly opting for
cloud storage and Big Data, which is
driving up the adoption of flash and
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