ESG and Scality report: AI, Automation Driving All-flash Object Storage as Primary Application Data Storage

As businesses grow, they can get overwhelmed with the isolated pools of data from many different sources. As such, they struggle with a fragmented storage portfolio that adds complexity and slows down innovation for business applications. Furthermore, digital business initiatives such as Automation and AI demands high-performance and massive capacity storage to make sense of such huge amounts of data. And, this demand is driving the adoption of on-premises all-flash object storage to provide customers’ top need — comprehensive data protection at scale, according to a new research paper released today from Enterprise Strategy Group and Scality®.

ESG’s prior research found that AI/ML and analytics are the business differentiators IT needs. Accordingly, 64% of IT decision-makers using AI/ML expect to increase spending in 2021.

The report finds that IT leaders are transiting their data storage ecosystems into all-flash object storage, encroaching on the territory of traditional primary storage solutions to meet the AI challenge. All-flash object storage powers the heavy workloads necessitated by these initiatives by quickly giving access to large volumes of unstructured data. The most significant all-flash object storage benefits include accelerating AI/ML environments, empowering business intelligence/analytics, increasing infrastructure performance and utilization, and improved application development.

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The report finds:

• 77% of IT professionals at organizations currently using all-flash object storage say the technology has had a high impact or has been a game-changing technology in their on-prem storage environment.
• Similarly, among organizations using or interested in all-flash object storage, 77% say new workloads or initiatives are driving demand for it.

Rapid adoption has already begun:

• 95% of respondents are using flash storage within all or part of their object storage environments; 23% say they already have an all-flash object storage solution.
• 87% of respondents at organizations not using all-flash object storage today expect to evaluate an on-premises all-flash object storage solution within the next 12 months.
• 57% of respondents ranked data protection and reliability as a highly important attribute of all-flash object storage solutions; 23% ranked performance as a top attribute.

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Scott Sinclair, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, commented “Digital business initiatives are fueling an increased emphasis on creating, storing and using data. This trend has led to increased adoption of on-premises all-flash object storage. It is early in the adoption phase but will become pervasive. All-flash object storage is well on its way to becoming a foundation of the modern storage ecosystem.”

While Paul Speciale, chief product officer, Scality, said, “While the race to access and harness data faster to power AI is on, companies need to ensure they have the most protected, reliable environment. In fact, comprehensive data protection is customers’ number one need. Customers are looking for platforms to improve their ability to access and harness data, especially as data sets grow at an average rate of 34% annually. The results from ESG demonstrate the urgency of moving toward solutions that can support organizations’ critical applications, AI and ML initiatives.”

The full report, The Digital Era Is Fueling Adoption of All-flash Object Storage, is available for download here.

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