Storage Industry Trends in 2023

This article was authored by Sameer Danave, senior director marketing, MSys Technologies LLC.

Crucial Storage Industry Trends in 2023
What it means for your business?
 

With the ever-changing landscape of the storage industry, it’s time to start thinking about what trends will dominate in 2023. The data center market is rising and will grow by 10% between 2021-2030. Advanced storage technologies like DNA storage and immutable backups are rising, with some being further from mainstream adoption than others. The storage industry continues to become the focal point among organizations due to the storage, management, and processing of colossal amounts of data.

Here are our top predictions for the most significant trends in storage in 2023:

1. Increased Investment in Data Protection and Security
The cost of a data breach in the U.S. averaged $9.44 million in 2022. Data centers will implement robust security measures to protect critical data through physical and logical security.

• a. Cloud-based Encryption: Leverages algorithms and mathematical operations to transform data into an unintelligible format, making it impossible for anyone without the key to view the content.
• b. Increased use of Blockchain: Securely and permanently records transactions between two parties while authenticating them through the public ledger feature.
• c. Digital Rights Management (DRM): Protects digital content from unauthorized use and copying, allowing copyright owners complete ownership of how their information is distributed.

2. Enhancing Storage Infrastructure Through Proactive Insights
AI for IT Operations (AIOps) tells the organization what is happening with storage, why it is happening, and what to do about it.

• a. AI, ML, and big data analytics will see a rise in adoption to manage storage capacity while providing proactive insights into complex storage systems.
• b. AI’s predictive analytics detect unusual patterns in data and identify complex trends.
• c. ML automates specific processes by training algorithms on known data sets.
• d. NLP understands user-friendly commands and creates more efficient workflow management.

3. Leveraging Replication, Encryption and Object Lifecycle Management for Fail-Proof Storage
Organizations will invest in storage solutions while planning to shift to ISV or cloud-native deployments for storage 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. Prominent public cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Azure continue to expand, and ISVs are investing heavily to provide data services in the public cloud.

• a. Amazon S3 with features like:
  • Versioning, Access Control Lists (ACLs), and Cross-region Replication (CRR) for DR purposes
  • Server-side Encryption (SSE) for security needs
• b. Microsoft Azure Blob Storage with high availability and durability while providing low latency access to data across various geographical regions.
• c. Google Cloud Storage with popular 3rd-party tool integrations such as Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka.

4. Containers for Storage: Automated Provisioning with Docker, Kubernetes, and more
Containers don’t get bogged down by differences in OSs and software versions, and they are incredibly flexible and portable.

Increased adoption will be seen for:

• a. Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift offer robust container-based solutions for storing and managing data
• b. OpenShift to deploy code into production environments quickly
• c. Portworx cloud-native storage services for snapshotting backups
• d. Ceph for its object storage capabilities compatible with Amazon S3

5. Adoption of Energy Efficient Storage Infrastructure
Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the need for environmental stability in their IT operations. The increasing demand for adopting environmental-friendly practices in storage infrastructure will lead to:

• a. Cloud computing to store and access data remotely and reduce energy consumption.
• b. Virtualization to improve resource utilization and lower power consumption by pooling multiple physical devices into one virtual environment
• c. Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) technology as they use server waste heat to generate electricity.
• d. Micro-modular data centers in place of large rack-mounted servers to reduce costs associated with maintenance and installation.

6. Immutable Backups to Ensure Unauthorized Access and Alteration Is Prevented
Immutable backup helps organizations protect their data from unauthorized access or alteration. By backing up data in an immutable format, no unauthorized changes can be made to the data, preventing data theft or corruption.

• a. Blockchain technology uses a ledger system to track data stored on the chain. This allows users to back up the data without worrying about it being modified or changed.
• b. Object Storage enables users to store objects of different sizes in a single place, making them more secure and easier to manage.
• c. Distributed Immutable Storage utilizes a decentralized system where all the data is securely stored and replicated across multiple nodes within the network.

7. Leveraging the Power of All-Flash Storage for High-Performance Applications
The introduction of NAND flash into mainstream storage array products has evolved to additional advancements in the storage media to “storage class memory” (SCM).

• a. Increase in all-flash storage adoption due to superior performance, scalability, and ability to handle more varied workloads.
• b. Further advances in capabilities, such as AI integrated with flash technology for predictive analytics across multiple media types.
• c. NVMe protocol for flash-based storage solutions allows devices to communicate directly with each other over a PCIe bus at speeds up to 7x faster than SATA or SAS products.

8. AI to Address the Storage 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 AI has helped to provide a more cost-effective data storage infrastructure.

• a. AI automates data management and organization, making access easier when needed.
• b. AI reduces storage costs by detecting duplicate/near-duplicate content and assisting customers in moving or archiving the correct data at the right time.
• c. Storage Optimization Analytics using AI automates migration to lower-cost storage and tracks storage savings, computing the overall ROI.

Wrap-up
As we move into 2023, the storage industry will continue to adapt and change to keep up with our growing demand. These are just a few ways that we predict the industry will evolve over the next year.