Analysis: Massive scale-out, file, and object storage winds are blowing through the incumbent storage supplier halls and threaten to become a cat 4 hurricane that will upend them.
There are three front-runners hustling at the front of this rising tempest. DDN, VAST Data, and WEKA, with Hammerspace accompanying them, are rushing towards the established incumbents – Dell, HPE, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, NetApp, and Pure Storage. All of them can see it coming and are assessing how fierce the storm is going to become.
Several of them have made moves already, with a third signaling it might.
HPE appears to be leading here. It has adopted a version of VAST Data’s disaggregated, shared-everything (DASE) architecture with its Alletra MP X10000 system, poised to match VAST from inside HPE’s GreenLake and partner ecosystem. NetApp has instituted a project to produce an AI-focused ONTAP. Dell has a project to parallelize PowerScale and it has its disaggregated PowerFlex storage software.
Pure Storage has indicated it’s making moves into the AI training storage arena via exec comments in its recent earnings call. IBM is buying upper-stack AI software supplier DataStax, but not getting directly involved in AI mass scale-out, file, and object storage.
Even Quantum has its Myriad OS development focused on this mass scale-out file and object storage arena.
Looking at the onrushing hustlers, VAST is the front-runner here, with its deliverable DASE product now supporting block, file, and object storage inside a globally distributed namespace and data space, Kafka event broking, and virtual dominance of the GPU-as-a-Service AI server farms market.
DDN is buoyed by years of HPC success, a longstanding Nvidia partnership, and its new Infinia OS supporting multiple data access protocols. It has recently taken in $300 million in private equity funding.
WEKA has surged through the legacy HPE parallel file systems market as HPC-style storage is being used by enterprises for AI workloads. And yet WEKA appears to be facing a reset, having experienced a raft of executive departures. The company raised $140 million in an E-round of VC funding in May last year, with a $1.6 billion valuation.
When a technology tsunami has hit storage incumbents in the past, they have embraced it in one of two ways: build their own tech or buy it in. HPE has been a big acquirer in the past. So too has Dell, Hitachi Vantara, NetApp, and even Pure.
Thus far with AI storage, there have been no acquisitions by the incumbents, only internal developments by Dell, HPE, NetApp, and Pure. Is the acceleration of the AI storage market demand build-up now reaching a point where it’s necessary for them to think about buying in the new tech they need?
Could Dell, no stranger to substantial storage acquisitions (remember EMC), be thinking of making a move here? Could IBM move downstack and mimic its prior Storwize buy? Ditto NetApp realizing it needs to move faster and doing a follow-on to its SolidFire and StorageGRID buys? Ditto also for Hitachi Vantara.
B&F is starting to think that a major acquisition by an incumbent storage supplier is overdue. They need to hedge their go-it-alone bets. The AI-focused, mass scale-out, multi-protocol, high-speed storage barbarians are at the gates. Which one of the incumbents will be the first to splash the cash and buy in?
