Software-defined storage: It’s a Thing

The global software-defined storage market is expected to grow by $42.79 billion over the next four years, according to Technavio.

The UK market research firm forecasts the market will grow 27.45 per cent during 2020, despite the disruption of Covid-19 and its associated shutdowns. It believes that the market will have fully normalised by Q3 2021, or by Q1 2022 at the latest.

Technavio cites the adoption of hyperconverged platforms is cited by as one reason for the growth. With hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), enterprises can avoid dependency on multiple storage, compute and networking systems because all three are combined into a virtualized platform. This delivers simplified management and also means that customers have a single vendor to call upon for support.

North America led the software-defined storage market in 2019, followed by APAC, Europe, South America, then the Middle East and Africa. Between now and 2024, North America will experience the highest incremental growth, owing to factors such as increasing demand from enterprises, and the adoption of advanced technologies, such as the expected uptake of 5G networks.

Cloud adoption is another driver for software-defined storage. As enterprises continue to invest in cloud services, this increases the demand for software-defined storage as it simplifies storage management, according to Technavio, and addresses data management challenges in cloud computing.

However, as a Blocks & Files noted last month, while IDC figures show that while demand for converged system is holding up, there is no clear sign of HCI sales eating into the sales of existing external storage platforms.