The storage landscape has been shifted by four main dynamics as vendors aim to capitalise on changes in data centre management, says Boaz Palgi, MD and co-founder of EMC's ScaleIO solution.
Speaking to journalists at the company's Flash tour, in Tel Aviv, he said while flexibility and scale were important parts in any data hosting solution, the following key pillars are central to growth in the sector:
Data centre consolidation
Although companies used to operate multiple data centres spread out across different locations, many now opt for regional centres which run more nodes than they did in localised centres. "This is something we are starting to see in the SME space. Companies are offering consolidated hosting, often in shared data centres," Palgi said.
Server resources
Companies that are able to find ways to get the best out of limited server resources tend to thrive once their capacity is increased, said Palgi. He noted that maximising application performance is what set the leaders apart from others in the storage market.
Hyper-convergence
According to Palgi, running multiple tiers of storage in a converged manner is a benefit that data centres were also tapping into. "Major vendors provided combined solutions over the past years as they wanted to expand what was available to clients."
Commoditisation
Smaller companies tend to share data centres with some of their counterparts - a solution that has been fruitful for data centre hosts. "The more open architecture of data centres has changed the game for SMEs and continues to grow in importance."
Palgi said EMC's answer to the flexibility question centres on its ScaleIO solution - which provides software and the ability to run it on any hardware chosen by the customer. "Companies choose server hardware needed for the applications, so they aren't forced into a generic solution that isn't optimised for their needs."
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