IT Trends

Growth of Software-Defined Storage Driven by Agility, Autonomous Management and Cost

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 10/04/17

Spending on software-defined storage will reach $16.2 billion in 2021, growing 13.5 percent each year, according to a new forecast from International Data Corp.

"Enterprise storage spending has already begun to move away from hardware-defined, dual-controller array designs toward SDS and from traditional on-premises IT infrastructure toward cloud environments (both public and private) based on commodity Web-scale infrastructure," according to IDC.

Running on off-the-shelf commodity hardware and using software to deliver storage functionality, SDS offers improved agility, autonomous storage management and cheaper cost, according to IDC.

File, object and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) are three sub-segments within SDS poised for rapid growth to keep up with future datacenter requirements. HCI will grow the fastest, according to IDC, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.6 percent and total spending of nearly $7.15 billion in 2021.

Object-based storage will grow at a CAGR of 10.3 percent through 2021, while file-based and block-based storage will see more moderate CAGRs of 6.3 and 4.7 percent, respectively, according to IDC.

"Because hyperconverged systems typically replace legacy SAN- and NAS-based storage systems, all the major enterprise storage systems providers have committed to the HCI market in a major way over the past 18 months," according to IDC. "This has made the HCI sub-segment one of the most active merger and acquisition markets as these providers prepare to capture anticipated SAN and NAS revenue losses to HCI as enterprises shift toward SDS solutions."