Storage Industry Trends for 2023
With 2022 coming to a close, it’s time to start thinking about what trends will dominate the storage industry in 2023. Many exciting changes are on the horizon, from new flash innovations to ever-growing data volumes. Advanced storage technologies like DNA storage and immutable backups are on the rise, with some being further from mainstream adoption than others. The storage industry continues to become the focal point among organizations of all sizes due to the storage, management, and processing of colossal amounts of data.
The data center market is on the rise and will grow by 10% between 2021 and 2030. Here are our top 8 predictions for the most significant trends in storage over the next few years. Keep an eye on these developments because they will shape the future of how we store and manage our data!
1.Increased Investment in Data Protection and Security
The cost of a data breach in the U.S. averaged $9.44 million in 2022. And for the 12th year in a row, the U.S. holds the title for the highest data breach cost, $5.09 million more than the global average. By 2025, the volume of data generated worldwide will exceed 180 zettabytes, which amounts to a whopping 40% annual growth. Data centers will implement robust security measures to protect critical data. In the coming years, better data protection is expected through physical and logical security. Actions may include, for instance, improved facial recognition technology and drones to build access control. Further adoption of ‘zero trust’ technologies, which prevent any user from connecting to the network without permission, will also be on the rise.
2.Smarter Storage with Artificial Intelligence and Digital Tools
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the move towards software automation and artificial intelligence — a trend that increased the need to ramp up the development of data centers. Data centers have evolved to be less dependent on humans, and this evolution does not seem to be reversing in a post-COVID world.
Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) enables monitoring, diagnostics, predictive analysis, and prescriptive functions for storage infrastructure and applications. According to a recent market study, the AI-powered storage market is set to be worth around $25 Billion by the end of 2025, reflecting at a 17.56% CAGR over the period. Essentially, AIOps will tell the organization what is happening with storage, why it is happening, what could happen, and what to do about it. By taking much of the manual work out of storage management, AIOps will drive efficiency and free IT staff to work on other tasks.
Data centers will continue to use digital tools — such as upstream computer simulations and tests for access control, electricity, heating costs, etc. — to streamline and optimize their operations. The use of digital tools allows the data centers to understand the various components in play when it comes to energy consumption, ensuring that all systems are consuming power optimally. Moreover, simulation tools can also help data centers determine the best possible layout of equipment to reduce distances between hardware and make sure that there is no wasted space.
3. Increased Use of Public Cloud for Storage Architecture
New areas like CloudOps and FinOps are always highlighted to optimize data storage across clouds in the new hybrid and complex IT world. Prominent public cloud providers like Google, AWS, and Azure continue to expand, and independent software vendors (ISV) are investing heavily to provide data services in the public cloud.
As per Gartner, more than half of enterprise IT spending in key market segments will shift to the cloud by 2025. Organizations are looking to leverage and extend traditional ISV data management solutions to the public cloud. Organizations will invest in storage solutions while planning for a shift to ISV or cloud-native deployments for storage in the public cloud.
Dedicated cloud teams are formed in many organizations to accelerate the move to the public cloud. Cloud strategy is no more an “either/or” conversation; it is an “and” conversation.
4.Containerized Storage Solutions Will Continue to Boom!
The emergence of containerized storage solutions has revolutionized how businesses and organizations store data. Containers don’t get bogged down by differences in operating systems and software versions, and they are incredibly flexible and portable. That makes them a perfect fit for many cloud applications. And, as more and more computing and storage moves to the cloud, containers are likely to become a core technology. IDC projects that by 2023 over 80 percent of workloads will shift to or be created by containers.
Furthermore, leveraging clustering tools allows scalability on an unprecedented level, enabling administrators to run applications from a single environment across multiple devices. Such solutions offer hassle-free provisioning and managing servers in multisite configurations thanks to integrated automation technology, making them ideal for large organizations with complex needs.
Containers provide a secure platform while ensuring the lowest latency and highest reliability among the competing cloud options. With their fast implementation time and simplified deployment process, containerized storage solutions quickly become the go-to choice for businesses looking to improve their infrastructure operations efficiently.
5. AI to the Rescue – Smarter Way to Address Infrastructure Issues
With more and more dense infrastructure housed in a small space, data centers are challenged with ensuring the efficient dissipation of the heat produced. The use of Artificial Intelligence has helped to provide a more cost-effective data storage infrastructure. The global AI powered storage market size was valued at $15.6 billion in 2021 and is projected to reach $162.5 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 26.7% from 2022 to 2031.
Organizations will be looking to invest more in AI solutions due to the following benefits
- Data can be compressed and stored more efficiently using machine learning algorithms, requiring less physical space and infrastructure.
- AI helps automate data management and organization, making it easier to find and access when needed.
- AI helps reduce storage costs by detecting duplicate or near-duplicate content and assisting customers in moving or archiving the correct data at the right time.
- Storage Optimization Analytics using AI automates migration to lower-cost storage and tracks storage savings, computing the overall return on investment (ROI).
AI is also increasingly playing a role in file compression. For videos, music, and images, AI-based compression can provide the same — or close to the same — level of visual quality with fewer bits. Another benefit is that it’s easier to upgrade, standardize, and deploy new AI codecs versus standard codecs since the models can be trained in a relatively short amount of time and — importantly — don’t require special-purpose hardware.
AI-powered Storage Industry growth is seeing an uptrend in 2023 and is expected to maintain its dominance in the upcoming years due to digitalization.
6. Increased Adoption of Environmental Stability Measures
Contributing to 2% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, data centers have a significant impact on climate change and the environment. This has resulted in an increasing need and awareness of implementing measures to make data centers more environmentally friendly. The modern consumer is 88% more likely to perceive your business positively if you support inherent environmental issues.
As organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the need for environmental stability in their IT operations, there is an increasing demand for adopting environmentally friendly practices in storage infrastructure.
- Systems to ensure the environment within the data center is kept at optimal temperatures and humidity levels to ensure the proper functioning of servers and other hardware.
- Monitoring solutions to keep track of any energy wastage, ongoing maintenance requirements, or unexpected temperature, humidity, or power anomalies to minimize disruptions or damage.
- Cold aisles containment, using efficient fans and cooling units, and more efficient lighting fixtures can also lead to more streamlined data centers that use less energy while generating less heat.
Through these methods and initiatives, organizations will aim to reduce their environmental impact while ensuring performance levels remain consistent with high availability standards. In short, increased adoption of environmental stabilization measures will contribute towards sustainable Storage management and create better working conditions for IT teams in data centers.
Pressure from customers, investors, and regulators has required the data center industry to make changes to support the environment. Data center companies will be working toward recycling and reusing equipment, using renewable energy, and creating more underwater data centers in the next year.
7. Immutable Backups – The Best Ransomware Deterrent
For an excellent reason, the immutable backup technology is attracting the interest of many enterprises, mainly financial and legal organizations. “Immutable means cannot be changed.” Immutable backup helps organizations protect their data from unauthorized access or alteration. By backing up data in an immutable format, you can be sure that no unauthorized changes can be made to the data, which can help prevent data theft or corruption. Additionally, immutable backups can help you meet compliance requirements and maintain audit trails.
Immutable storage can be applied to the disk, SSD, tape media, and cloud storage. Immutable storage is easy and convenient, allowing the user to create a file with the desired immutability policy. Immutable backups are the only way to be 100 percent protected from any desired or accidental erasure or change in backups. In a fast-paced business environment, where threats constantly evolve, immutable backups are soon becoming the game changers.
8. All-Flash Storage will Continue to Rise
Most storage manufacturers are looking to deliver solutions with 100% solid-state flash drives. The introduction of NAND flash into mainstream storage array products has evolved to additional advancements in the storage media to “storage class memory” (SCM). This has improved response times and delivered improvements in quad-level cell technology (QLC) to lower down costs of the previous tri-level cell storage products in use today.
In the last few years, modern storage types have used a small computer serial interface (SCSI) stack – most recently via serial attached SCSI (SAS) – designed for spinning media introduced in the 1980s. This fabric must also evolve to ensure efficient use of the compute stack’s integration with storage. Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) and NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) are introduced to help solve the problem. Server operating systems being updated with native NVMe-oF capabilities for FC, TCP, and RoCEv2 (for example), we predict growth in adopting new storage fabric technologies.
Manage Your Storage Engineering Services Now!
The storage industry is constantly evolving, and needs continuous innovation to keep up with the latest trends. We put together a list of the top 8 predictions for 2023. MSys Technologies’ Storage Engineering Services allow your IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives while our Storage Engineers meet your end-to-end Storage Engineering demands. You can deploy the expertise and management of our team with complete control of your data.
You can strategically reduce IT operational costs with MSys Technologies’ Storage Engineering services. Our Data Storage Services are tailored for your specific service level requirements that will help you achieve the following:
- ~50% Improvement in Data Recovery Rate
- ~2x Enhanced Operational Efficiency
- Real-Time Performance Monitoring
- Latest Storage Firmware Upgrades
- Data Backup, Disaster Recovery, and Archiving
- 24/7 Application Support and Value Maintenance
We’ll help future-proof your business so you can stay competitive in this ever-changing market. Don’t forget that data protection will continue to be a key concern for businesses in 2023. Allow MSys Technologies’ to make your storage solutions up-to-date and compliant with the latest regulations!
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