The Top Storage Trends for 2022

The Top Storage Trends for 2022

By: Eric Herzog, CMO, Infinidat - Dec 16, 2021

As 2021 heads to the finish line, we look at the storage market to see an exciting 2022 right around the corner. Cyber resilience, AI, supercharged application and workload performance and availability, and reduction of OPEX and CAPEX in today’s world of hybrid cloud and containers – all of these come together to frame up the next 12 months. Understanding these enterprise storage trends will give you an advantage and help you formulate your strategic IT plan going forward. Read what is coming your way in 2022.

Trend #1: THE critical nature of data and cyber resilience from the storage estate within the corporate/company cybersecurity strategy

The threat of cyber attacks has reached such a feverish pitch that 66% of Fortune 500 CEOs named it their #1 business threat in the?Fortune 500 CEO survey?in mid-2021. Similarly, in a KPMG CEO survey in March 2021, CEOs also noted cybersecurity was their #1 concern. Alarmingly, the average number of days to identify and contain a data breach, according to security analysts, is 287 days.

If an enterprise or service provider does not have data and cyber resilience, the cyber criminals will be relentlessly launching cyberattacks. In short, it is not “IF” you will suffer a cyberattack, it is when and how often. Being prepared encompasses having data and cyber resilient storage as a critical component of your enterprise’s corporate cybersecurity strategy.

Trend #2: Incorporating AI technology throughout the entire storage system and software-defined storage and modern data protection infrastructure

Storage technology continues to be a critical foundation to optimize the performance of AI applications, workloads and uses cases. However, in 2022, the incorporation of AI technologies across storage systems and software-defined storage will deliver superior value, dramatically save on CAPEX and OPEX, and improve real-world performance across all applications and workloads.

In 2022, AI will be used to build storage systems and SDS. This trend will harness the full power of AI for your storage estate.

Trend #3: Integration of storage technologies into off-prem environments based on hybrid and container technologies

The shift to hybrid cloud and container technologies will continue to proliferate at an accelerated pace. With many workloads moving to a hybrid cloud configuration, it will be imperative to have the infrastructure that supports core, edge and cloud, as well as the virtualization layer and the container layer across a hybrid environment.

This will enhance the ability of enterprises to deliver the right end-user services with the right SLAs for their business. The importance of possessing hybrid cloud integration capabilities will substantially increase in 2022. We also see enhancements being adopted, such as logical air-gapping (both local and remote), which is an essential part of a hybrid cloud cyber security strategy.

Trend #4: Leveraging storage technology to ensure application and workload performance and availability

Not only are servers important to real-world application performance, but storage is also extremely critical. For highly transactional block workloads, there will be an enhanced focus on application latency on read and write of sub-100 microsecond. While there are a multitude of storage performance metrics you can look at, latency is the number one determinant for real-world transactional performance.

Through the real-world application layer (not “hero” numbers), an IT team could see performance as low as 50 microseconds on the read side and as low as 75-80 microseconds on the write side. This will optimize real-world performance. Accepting anything less means a company is stuck in a legacy solution that is sub-optimal.

While application performance is critical in today’s enterprise, having the maximum system availability is also just as critical. If the storage is fast but not available, then performance is a moot point. In 2022, we see a dramatic emphasis by enterprises on having their storage meeting 100% availability characteristics.

Trend #5: How storage reduces OPEX and CAPEX for infrastructure

Pressure for enterprise CIOs to reduce costs will only increase, given economic fluctuations and business uncertainties. IT leaders will scramble to find ways to take costs out of the data infrastructure.

Due to high performance and low latency in a software-defined storage architecture, an increasing number of organizations are able to consolidate multiple workloads onto a single storage array in 2022, dramatically cutting CAPEX and OPEX. No need anymore for 50 different arrays each running 1 application or workload, when with 2022 enterprise storage solutions all 50 of those applications and workloads can fit on just one or two storage arrays. Talk about saving on watts, slots, power, cooling, floorspace, and operational manpower.

Additionally, the use of storage built from the ground up with AI technology substantially reduces your operational manpower – hence OPEX. Having the storage system automatically adjust caching and other performance parameters on the fly with AI accuracy or automatically configuring your storage system, reduce the workload on your IT, data center, and storage administrators. Also, coupling that with AIOps centric storage monitoring and metricing software with proactive support will lower your OPEX and CAPEX as well. In fact, some storage companies have extended their own AIOps storage software with that from Data Center AIOps vendors, such as ServiceNow, Virtana, VMware, Splunk and others, reducing not just OPEX for your storage but OPEX for your overall data center.

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About Eric Herzog - Eric Herzog is the Chief Marketing Officer at Infinidat. Prior to joining Infinidat, Herzog was CMO and VP of Global Storage Channels at IBM Storage Solutions. His executive leadership experience also includes: CMO and Senior VP of Alliances for all-flash storage provider Violin Memory, and Senior Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing for EMC’s Enterprise & Mid-range Systems Division.

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