Storage market research reports
Storage market research helps any technology professional make educated decisions about which storage technologies to select. Find the latest news and reports in this topic section about the data storage market, including enterprise storage and cloud storage leaders, trends and analysis. The news section tracks product technology comparisons and market share reports.
Top Stories
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Report
17 Jan 2024
TechTarget Storage Products of the Year 2023 nomination form
Nominate your favorite or best storage products for the annual TechTarget Storage Products of the Year awards. Continue Reading
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News
20 Sep 2021
LTO tape capacity shipments dip, but expected to rise
The return of businesses to the office plus tape's protection against cyber attacks should help increase LTO shipments. In addition, LTO-9 recently launched with higher capacity. Continue Reading
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Feature
25 Jan 2021
Hyperscale shift to 18 TB, SMR HDDs top '21 hard disk trends
New 20 TB energy-assisted and SMR hard disk options are starting to ship, but experts predict the top 2021 trend in data center hard drives will be the transition to 18 TB HDDs. Continue Reading
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Infographic
07 May 2020
Top infrastructure modernization strategy challenges
Increase the odds of IT modernization success by learning about the challenges and obstacles others have faced when attempting to modernize their infrastructure for their business. Continue Reading
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News
27 Apr 2020
Pandemic changes enterprise storage buying plans
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing some IT organizations to delay or push up their 2020 enterprise data storage purchases, while others continue with business as usual. Continue Reading
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Infographic
09 Mar 2020
What's behind today's IT infrastructure modernization strategies?
See how businesses have altered operating environments, applications and processes to meet IT infrastructure modernization goals, their budgets and how far along they've gotten. Continue Reading
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News
13 Feb 2020
Enterprise HDDs hit 20 TB, boost throughput in 2020
While waiting for HAMR to drop, we have more immediate spinning disk developments to watch out for in 2020, such as dual-actuator and shingled drives. Continue Reading
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News
27 Sep 2019
Forrester Wave shows newcomers edging out legacy vendors
Well-funded startups moved up in the 2019 Forrester Wave, while most legacy vendors dropped. Cyberattack recoverability and single-pane-of-glass management were leading factors. Continue Reading
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News
08 Jan 2019
Cloud, data management top 2019 enterprise data storage options
Data management -- on premises and in the cloud -- appears on the rise as a 2019 spending priority for storage pros, while flash arrays and converged infrastructure may have peaked. Continue Reading
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Blog Post
30 Aug 2018
Report highlights IT resilience shortcomings
In "The State of IT Resilience," analysis firm IDC estimates that as many as 50% of organizations could not survive a disaster event. A co-author of the report says long-time threats of hardware ... Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2018
Tape storage capacity plays important role as data increases
There's a long runway for tape, with hundreds of terabytes of storage capacity soon available on a single cartridge. Flash, disk, the cloud and tape will all be key for storage. Continue Reading
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News
03 May 2018
Dell EMC midrange storage keeps its overlapping arrays
Dell EMC plans to keep overlapping midrange storage for now. Dell Technologies World 2018 rollouts included CloudIQ analytics and Isilon SaaS beta with Google Cloud Platform. Continue Reading
- 01 May 2018
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E-Zine
01 May 2018
The AFA market faces unprecedented and rapid commoditization
Prices of all-flash arrays have nosedived. Massive discounts due to fierce competition are contributing to rapid and unprecedented commoditization of all-flash arrays and changes in the AFA market. Meantime, the demand for AFAs is shrinking because of increasing hyper-convergence and cloud adoption. This is bad news for storage vendors. To survive, they must innovate and differentiate themselves by solving real problems users face. But it's all to the advantage of storage buyer in today's AFA market. Learn how and why this is happening and how you can benefit.
The data explosion has pushed storage systems to the breaking point, leading many enterprises to spend a good deal of their IT dollars on the cloud, backup storage and on-premises flash, according to the TechTarget 2018 IT Priorities Survey. More than half of those surveyed will see their IT budgets increase in 2018, according to the IT spending trends study. And the average growth in spending across all enterprises will be about the same this year as it was in 2017. Demand for on-premises storage infrastructure, meanwhile, continues unabated for a large percentage of companies, as it does for hyper-converged and converged infrastructures.
Reliance on the cloud is leading almost a third of respondents to consolidate cloud workloads to better meet the management challenges presented by multiple cloud environments, while the on-demand model of the cloud itself has altered how we expect to consume and pay for IT resources. This includes storage, where vendors have changed how they deliver core features like deduplication and compression. The 2018 IT spending trends highlighted in this issue shed considerable light on today's storage market. This, in turn, will help elucidate your present and future storage needs.
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Feature
01 May 2018
IT spending priorities for 2018 include cloud and flash storage
More than half of respondents to our survey have larger IT budgets this year, and their storage spending is focused on ways to manage massive data growth. Continue Reading
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Opinion
03 Nov 2017
Navigating cloud-based data storage requires some caution
Cloud services are economical and easy to use -- if you know the ropes. Approach cloud computing issues with caution; you just might run into familiar on-premises storage problems. Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Oct 2017
Buying NAS: Do you want performance and scalability?
Although SANs still rule the modern the data center, the NAS array maintains a position high up on tech buyers' shopping lists for new primary storage. Continue Reading
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Blog Post
25 May 2017
DataCore IT survey shows gradual uptake of new storage technologies
A DataCore IT survey on the state of software-defined storage, hyper-converged systems and cloud storage showed a gradual uptake of some of the most heavily promoted new technologies. For instance, ... Continue Reading
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E-Zine
03 Apr 2017
2017 IT spending trends for data storage
For the 15th year, Storage magazine has surveyed storage pros to learn about their IT spending trends for the coming months. As you'd expect, the cloud continues to pick up steam for both primary and secondary projects, while all-flash arrays and SSDs also rated highly. Hyper-converged interest, meanwhile, nearly doubled over 2016. See how your 2017 shopping list compares to today's IT spending trends.
When SSDs supplanted HDDs, it revealed many deficiencies in the traditional RAID array model. Storage vendors changed course, leading to the highly scalable, fast and reliable hyper-converged systems of today. Is it time to go all-in with hyper-convergence?
IT is rapidly evolving to keep pace with today's data-intensive business apps and trends, such as the internet of things. For storage, this means newer silicon tech, inherent analytics, embedding hybrid cloud tiering and (often) convergence with or hosting of core data processing directly, and new management techniques.
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Feature
03 Apr 2017
Flash, cloud top data storage options for storage pros
Cloud is popular among data storage priorities for primary and backup storage, while most say they will use flash in primary data storage. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
10 Feb 2017
Announcing the best data storage products of 2016!
This year marks the 15th edition of the Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com Products of the Year awards, recognizing the best storage products of the past year. Nominated products competed across six categories, with the top in each category receiving bronze, silver or gold. Judges graded finalists on innovation, performance, manageability, ease of integration and use, functionality and value.
Modern storage arrays may offer previously unheard of max capacities, but that doesn't mean you won't have problems meeting today's ever-increasing storage capacity and performance requirements. We explore how to squeeze more bits and bytes out of storage systems without negatively affecting storage network performance through best practices for evaluation and configuration as well as tools to help with monitoring and management.
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E-Zine
09 Jan 2017
A dozen data storage vendors to watch in 2017
Hyper-convergence, solid-state, software-defined storage and the cloud have revolutionized the way we deploy, manage and secure storage. How the dozen leading data storage vendors presented here navigate the challenges and opportunities created by these changes will tell us a lot about the short- and long-term future of data center storage. Find out what to watch out for with each of these data storage vendors as the year unfolds.
On-demand object, block and file storage as a service from the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure is a standard part of today’s IT toolkit. Cloud storage isn’t the exclusive domain of the public cloud, however. You can gain the same convenience, flexibility and agility by building your own internal storage cloud. We present the resources enterprises can use to construct one of these, and how to integrate it with existing storage and computing resources as well as public cloud storage.
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Feature
04 Nov 2016
A look at the future of data storage careers
Thanks to virtualization, the cloud and solid-state technology, data storage professionals and those who want to pursue a career in it face an uncertain future. Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Sep 2016
Veritas, Veeam top choices of data backup app users
Data backup app users are tough critics, but Veritas NetBackup and Veeam Backup & Replication won over users in this year's Quality Awards. Continue Reading
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Opinion
03 Aug 2016
Simplifying data storage technologies is hard
All-flash arrays and hyper-converged storage are two technologies that make it tough to simplify data storage technology. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
06 Jun 2016
Server-side flash technology lifts solid-state adoption
Server-side solid-state storage is more ubiquitous than ever due to growing capacities and rapidly dropping flash technology prices. There are a many ways to install flash technology in a server, though there are decisions to make before you buy. We examine flash technology form factors, interfaces, protocols and capacities, as well as use cases, advantages and limitations.
Disk-based backups revolutionized data protection. While far more expensive to deploy and maintain than tape, a growing list of vendors are consolidating backup with other secondary storage requirements into appliances that make disk-based backup more cost-effective.
Although tape may no longer be the storage medium of choice for backup and disaster recovery, it still has a solid place in enterprises as an archive tier and as a transportation and sharing format for certain industries. In this issue of Storage magazine, we explore the state of the art of tape and its potential use cases today.
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E-Zine
06 Apr 2016
Storage pros see high demand in 2016 salary survey
Storage magazine has tracked storage salaries for 13 years, polling readers to gather data about pay, benefits and other influences on job satisfaction. Our 2016 salary survey shows demand for storage savvy IT pros is still high as reflected by the overall average salary of nearly $98,000. We look at how geography, education, experience and other factors affect storage salaries in our 2016 salary survey.
When virtual servers first appeared in data centers, storage generally wasn't up to the task. Today, most vendors have tuned their wares to better support virtual environments. But you still might have to get under the hood to fix a bottleneck or two. We'll tell you what to look for and how to fix it.
Few companies are ready to give up their on-premises storage resources in favor of cloud storage. Hybrid setups that integrate on-premises with the cloud are the most desirable arrangements and vendors are beginning to sit up and take notice.
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Feature
04 Mar 2016
NetApp and Synology top NAS storage systems survey
A storage pioneer and relative newcomer land top honors in our 10th Quality Awards NAS storage systems survey of midrange and enterprise users. Continue Reading
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Blog Post
08 Sep 2015
External storage sales down as market shifts to hyperscale and server-based storage
External storage sales are shrinking. The total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue grew to an $8.8 billion during the second quarter of 2015, according to IDC. However, sales are ... Continue Reading
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Feature
30 Jul 2015
Performance counts when buying a solid-state storage device
More than half of our surveyed companies are using flash now, with plans to use it for more than just mission-critical apps. Continue Reading
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Feature
02 Sep 2014
SAN storage systems purchases driven by capacity, performance
Anticipated year-over-year capacity growth of 24% and the need to boost the performance of existing applications is driving new SAN storage systems. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
01 Jan 2013
Should you believe vendors’ jaw-dropping solid-state performance specs?
The benefits of solid-state storage are clear -- cool running, space-saving and blistering performance. But just how “blistering” is that performance? Data storage vendors toss previously unheard of numbers around, like millions of IOPS, to show the speed of their hybrid and all-solid-state drive arrays … but are they really that fast? We take a look at how the vendors get their numbers, and what numbers are meaningful for your environment.
Storage tiering’s been around for a while, but has recently received a boost from solid-state. We look at who’s doing what with automated tiering and describe some of the tiering specs that will be most important to you.And for the seventh year, users register their satisfaction (or disappointments) with midrange and enterprise-class network-attached storage (NAS) systems in the latest installment of our Quality Awards for NAS. Continue Reading