Data Center Flash Storage Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2019-2024

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

Vendors of all-flash storage solutions are offering hybrid arrays that combine both SSD and HDD in a single system

The increased adoption of cloud, big data, IoT, artificial intelligence technologies is aiding the digitalization of the enterprise's business environment, thereby leading to the procurement of all-flash storage solutions. Hard disk drives were traditionally used to store and process data in mission-critical facilities.  However, with the growing demand for performance and efficiency among complex mission-critical and high-performance computing applications, all-flash storage solutions were introduced in the market a decade ago to overcome the pitfalls of traditional storage systems. These are a type of external storage systems that use solid-state drives (SSD) rather than spinning hard disk drives (HDD) to store and process data. Vendors offer hybrid arrays that combine both SSD and HDD in a single system. There are also server systems offered in the market that support solid state drives (SSD) such as server-side SSD systems. All-flash arrays offer shared storage in the network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) environment. 

DATA CENTER FLASH STORAGE MARKET DYNAMICS

The rapid decline in the cost of SSD drives is expected to aid the data center flash storage market during the forecast period.

The complexity of enterprise application has increased significantly in the past five years after the advent and adoption of cloud and big data analytics. The increase in the data traffic has intensified application Input/Output (I/O) operations in the data center environment. To support the growing I/O traffic, server systems in data centers are equipped with the latest hardware along with associated storage and network devices. Mission-critical applications act as a backbone for business operations, therefore, improper functioning of these applications is likely to result in huge losses. A majority of enterprise database applications are running in the all-flash storage environment along with applications such as analytics and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

The adoption of converged and hyper-converged infrastructure and the rapid decline in the SSD drives cost is expected to aid the growth of the global data center storage market during the forecast period. Converged infrastructure is a hardware platform, where servers with the internal or external storage and network switches are offered as integrated rack scale systems. The difference between converged and hyper-converged infrastructure is the software layer. In the hyper-converged infrastructure, the software layer simplifies resource allocations between multiple workloads and automates the process in an effective manner to reduce the administrative time of managing infrastructure in the data center environment.

DATA CENTER FLASH STORAGE MARKET SEGMENTATION

This market research report includes a detailed segmentation of the data center flash storage market by

• Systems
• Industries
• Geography

DATA CENTER FLASH STORAGE MARKET: SYSTEMS

 SAN is a common storage networking architecture for business-critical applications with high throughput and low latency

Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Direct Attached Storage (DAS) are the three significant system architecture in the data center environment. The SAN segment has dominated the market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 18% during the forecast period. SAN systems enable the block-level access to data and are based on the interconnection scheme such as FC SAN and iSCSI SAN. FC SAN enables communication between the server and the external storage system at a speed of 2−32 Gbps, whereas iSCSI SAN communication can be achieved over the Ethernet network. SAN is one of the most common storage networking architectures used for business-critical applications for high throughput and low latency. The advent of flash storage solutions has prompted vendors to redesign their SAN systems to support hybrid disk and all-flash-only storage systems.

NAS is the second-most-popular system, which allows file-level access to data. All-flash NAS systems are witnessing high demand from enterprises which have a chunk of unstructured data and require a high-capacity file storage system. It is expected that after 2020, the reducing cost all-flash NAS solutions will be a major driver for their adoption.DAS is a traditional topology where storage devices are attached to the servers through a direct communication path.

Dell EMC Islion is the leading all flash scale-out NAS solution available in the data center flash storage market. Innovations in the market have aided the availability of all-flash unified storage systems that support both (NAS) and block (SAN) data storage.

DATA CENTER FLASH STORAGE MARKET: END-USERS

 Constant innovations to increase the effectiveness of flash systems in data centers

Cloud/IT services, BFSI, healthcare, media and entertainment, and others are the prominent end-users of the data center flash storage market. Cloud/IT services are dominating the market and are expected to grow at a CAGR of 18% during 2018–2024. These services are offered cloud service providers (CSPs) and other managed hosting services providers. Cloud/IT services are offered as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud service providers procure of a variety of systems that include all-flash SAN, NAS, and server-side SSD products. They are constantly innovating their systems and architecture to increase the effectiveness of flash systems in data centers. Amazon Web Services, Google, Alibaba, and Microsoft are a few leading cloud service providers worldwide.

Industries such as manufacturing, energy, automotive, government, education, retail/e-commerce, and telecommunication are adopting all-flash storage systems in their on-premises data center and colocation facilities. Also, the increased data generation through the adoption of IoT technologies in manufacturing, energy and automotive sectors will be a major driver for the adoption of all-flash storage solutions. Further, decreasing costs of these storage devices will increase the application of these storage devices in these industries. Manufacturing, automotive, and retail/e-commerce sectors are likely to contribute significantly toward the revenue growth of the data center flash storage market during the forecast period.

DATA CENTER FLASH STORAGE MARKET: GEOGRAPHY

China and India are expected to witness strong adoption of all-flash solutions during the forecast period

The US is a leading country for data center flash storage adoption, followed by Germany, China, the UK, and Japan. The data center market in US is growing due to investments from colocation providers, hyperscale data center operators, enterprises, and government agencies. Growing internet penetration, increasing the use of social media, the rising smartphone penetration, the increasing adoption of the public cloud and hybrid cloud servicesare the factors driving the market globally. The adoption of all-flash storage solutions has increased in several industries, and the growing internet traffic, coupled with infrastructure supporting IoT and artificial intelligence workloads in data centers, will increase all-flash adoption during the forecast period in existing and new facilities.

In the APAC region, China and India are expected to witness strong adoption of all-flash solutions during the forecast period. The adoption of all-flash systems in Southeast Asia is currently low, however, it is expected to have an impact on the global data center flash storage market after 2022. Increasing investments from hyperscale service providers, adoption of managed hosting services, procurement of high-performance computing infrastructure, high occupancy rates in colocation facilities are likely to drive the all-flash across the market in APAC during the forecast period.

The data center flash storage market research report includes in-depth coverage of the industry analysis with revenue and forecast insights for the following segments:

Systems

• Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
• Storage Area Networking (SAN)
• Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Industries

• Cloud/IT services
• BFSI
• Healthcare
• Retail
• Others

Geography

• Americas
  • US
  • Canada
  • Latin America
• Europe
  • UK
  • Germany
  • France
• APAC
  • China
  • Japan
  • India
• MEA
  • GCC
  • South Africa