Storage Trends in 2014 for Riverbed

Here are the storage trends in 2014 for Rob Whiteley, VP of solution marketing, Riverbed Technology, Inc.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Will Fizzle Out
If you look under the covers, SDS has been part of the conversation for more than a decade. The current discussion on SDS has been focused on creating pooled, abstracted, heterogeneous storage that can be automated. This isn’t new, though. What’s really happening is an interesting way to elevate the dialog and help organizations get over the knowledge hump. It’s about bringing SDS along with the overall SDN and SDDC journey. The problem is it isn’t about the technology; it’s about bringing it all together. As with any infrastructure component, storage teams need to quickly provision capacity for the business. In 2014 conversations about SDS will fizzle as there’s not a lot new innovation here. Expect the conversation to quickly pivot to a broader one around server, storage and networks as part of the software defined data center.

Companies to finally start putting primary storage into cloud
Cloud storage has been a prediction for a few years now, but the implementation has been slow due to the distrust in the various services available as well as security and data loss issues. Today the majority of an organizations storage being saved in the cloud is for backup and archiving, which are less risky data sets. Storage teams and organizations desperately want the savings of time and money cloud storage promises. As cloud storage providers get better at providing secure and highly available solutions, combined with the maturity of cloud gateways to interface these clouds, companies will start putting primary storage into the cloud. In 2014 expect companies to disaggregate data and compute. Some companies will put large data sets in the cloud, and then pull that into the datacenter to analyze; others will connect compute clouds to storage clouds to create multi-tier applications that aren’t cohabitated in the same location. In fact, progressive enterprises will even start storing entire copies of their data center including the memory, storage and compute in the cloud. These more mature companies will demonstrate the ability to boot their entire data center from cloud storage.

Network company will acquire storage company
The rise of converged infrastructure stacks – combining server, storage, compute, virtualization, and management tools all pre-integrated – is not new and will continue to grow. Most of these are delivered via multi-vendor models, but we see some large vendors now doing the entire stack from soup to nuts. Once storage is abstracted, pooled, and automated, the value comes in being able to move data and VMs around — which requires tight integration with virtualized networking. Economically it makes sense for one vendor to provide all the networking and storage services across the infrastructure. Therefore, in 2014 a large networking company will acquire a small storage start-up that provides the storage virtualization and automation to make their converged infrastructure offerings more powerful.

Data security will get turned on its head
All of the struggles and issues with data security, data encryption and data leakage are due to the fact that data lives everywhere. As new virtual technologies allow organizations to centralize the data and then project it out to those who require the data; many of the solutions and tactics used in the past to protect the data will change. The number of solution and devices organizations invested in to protect its data will ultimately decline or even go away. Next year, there will be a change in where the data resides, meaning organizations will store all the data inside their own data center or in storage clouds, reducing or even eliminating data that resides on an individual machines. With the data running in centralized private and public clouds, the concern over data security is minimized as companies use their tried-and-true security capabilities and processes. In 2014, expect companies to finally embrace centralized architectures; a simple concept that will turn data security on its head.