Lots of Changes, But Top Storage Vendor Lineup To Remain Intact
Posted by
Steve Wexler
April 13, 2011
As for the three storage-centric powerhouses--EMC, NetApp and HDS--they haven't been standing still, either. At the start of the year EMC made its biggest-ever storage announcement, while NetApp introduced a new suite of storage products, an updated operating system, management software and solid-state disk drives at the end of 2010. Meanwhile, HDS extended its cloud reach with enhancements to its object storage solution--Hitachi Content Platform--and the introduction of an on-premises intelligent storage cache for distributed sites.
But what does all this mean in context of the future of the data center? The short answer, says Dave Russell, Gartner research VP, storage technologies and strategies, is that there is no silver bullet for storage. There is no single answer, vendor, product or technology for addressing all of storage.
In researching the State of Storage report and a new NETWORK COMPUTING cover story on unified computing stacks, it's clear that the major vendors see storage as a key pillar of their overall data center product ecosystem, and have been working to better integrate storage with server and network infrastructure, says Kurt Marko, author of the report. Ultimately, he expects tighter integration or further consolidation as the big get bigger.
"I think pure-play storage vendors will partner with, or eventually be acquired by, the larger systems vendors to deliver this level of integration. The Cisco/EMC VCE [Virtual Computing Environment] initiative is a good example of partnership, while HP/3PAR/LeftHand is an obvious example of vertical integration."
Terri McClure, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, sees a big push toward convergence of servers and storage into all-in-one appliances--some focused on specific challenges, like big data. (Examples include Oracle Exadata, EMC's Greenplum-based solution and HP's new Vertica-based appliance.) "The overarching theme of these solutions is to make them fast to deploy, easy to use, and both space- and power-efficient. We still see users looking to squeeze every dime possible out of operational expenses, and shortening provisioning time, while simplifying the infrastructure, contributes to cost reduction."
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