SURVEY Storage User Demand Study, 2012 —Fall Edition ... · like Nexenta and open source...

Filing Information: June 2013, IDC #241840, Volume: 1, Tab: Markets

Storage Systems: Survey

S U R V E Y

S t o r a g e U s e r D e m a n d S t u d y , 2 0 1 2 — F a l l E d i t i o n : M a n y U s e s o f I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e

Natalya Yezhkova

I D C O P I N I O N

It is evident that most conversations about enterprise storage systems relate to

external enterprise storage systems (i.e., systems deployed outside of a server). This

is well justified as the latter is a well-established $26 billion market with its own trends

and stakeholders. Another part of the storage market — internal storage (i.e., storage

within a server) — is typically less discussed because of its historically smaller size

and close ties with server applications. However, this segment shouldn't be

underestimated. IDC's survey of storage administrators, completed in fall 2012 as

IDC's Storage User Demand Study (SUDS) Survey, reveals the following:

While servers with internal storage are most commonly used for typical server

workloads, such as database, enterprise applications, and email server, nearly

half of the survey respondents also use some of servers deployed in their

datacenters as standalone storage arrays or storage appliances.

On average, approximately 10% of internal storage capacity deployed in

corporate datacenters (excluding service provider hyperscale datacenters) is

installed in servers dedicated to storing data. In addition, the extra embedded

storage capacity in application servers is also broadly used as a shared pool

through deployment of virtual storage appliance (VSA) software.

While "top brand" software products, like those from Microsoft and Red Hat, will

dominate the market of storage systems based on industry-standard off-the-shelf

servers, penetration of products from smaller vendors, (e.g., Nexenta and

Openfiler) will increase in the next 12 months, especially in regions outside the

Americas.

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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

P

In This Study 1

Methodology ............................................................................................................................................. 1

Situat ion Overview 2

Setting the Base: Deployments of Internal Storage .................................................................................. 2

Use Cases for Servers with Internal Storage..................................................................................... 3

Storage Software Platforms: Microsoft in the Lead, Smaller Vendors and Open Source Gaining ........................................................................................................................ 7

Virtual Storage Appliances ................................................................................................................ 10

External Storage Data Use Cases — Top Vendor Positioning .......................................................... 12

Future Out look 15

Storage Capacity: No Significant Shifts in Plans ...................................................................................... 15

Testing Interest to Converged and Integrated Systems..................................................................... 16

Average Useful Life of Storage Systems: High End and Scale Out Live the Longest........................ 17

Essent ial Guidance 18

Learn More 18

Related Research..................................................................................................................................... 18

Appendix................................................................................................................................................... 18

Survey Respondent Demographics ................................................................................................... 18

How Are SUDS and Server/Storage Workloads Related to Each Other?.......................................... 21

Definitions................................................................................................................................................. 23

Verticals............................................................................................................................................. 23

Enterprise Storage System................................................................................................................ 24

Data Use Cases ................................................................................................................................ 24

Application......................................................................................................................................... 24

Storage Class .................................................................................................................................... 25

©2013 IDC #241840

L I S T O F T A B L E S

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1 Top 3 External Enterprise Storage System Vendors by Select Data Use Case Based on Terabytes Shipped, 1H12 ............................................................................................................ 14

2 Top 3 External Enterprise Storage System Vendors by Select Data Use Case Based on Factory Revenue, 1H12 ............................................................................................................... 14

3 Server/Storage Workloads and SUDS Comparison ..................................................................... 22

4 Vertical Industry Categorization ................................................................................................... 23

5 SUDS Data Use Cases by Group ................................................................................................ 24

6 Examples of Storage System Families in Storage Class ............................................................. 25

#241840 ©2013 IDC

L I S T O F F I G U R E S

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1 Worldwide Internal Storage Systems Capacity Shipped Share by Region, 2012......................... 3

2 Current Use of Internal Storage ................................................................................................... 4

3 Average Allocation of Internal Storage Capacity to Various Use Cases Currently and in the Next 12 Months .................................................................................................................. 5

4 Average Allocation of Internal Storage Capacity to Storage-Specific Use Cases Currently and in the Next 12 Months by Region .......................................................................................... 6

5 Average Allocation of Internal Storage Capacity to Various Use Cases by Company Size ......... 7

6 Adoption of Storage Software Platforms Currently and in the Next 12 Months ............................ 8

7 Adoption of Storage Software Platforms Currently and in the Next 12 Months by Medium-Sized Businesses........................................................................................................... 9

8 Adoption of Storage Software Platforms Currently and in the Next 12 Months by Large Businesses......................................................................................................................... 10

9 Status of Adoption of Virtual Storage Appliance Products Currently and in the Next 12 Months ............................................................................................................................ 11

10 Adoption of Select Virtual Storage Appliance Products Currently and in the Next 12 Months ............................................................................................................................ 12

11 Distribution of External Enterprise Storage Capacity Shipped Among Three Data Use Case Groups, 1H12 ..................................................................................................................... 13

12 Plans to Deploy and Retire External Enterprise Storage Systems in the Next 12 Months by Storage Capacity..................................................................................................................... 15

13 Plans to Purchase Storage Systems in the Next 12 Months by System Type.............................. 16

14 Average Useful Life of Enterprise Storage Systems by Class...................................................... 17

15 Respondents by Region............................................................................................................... 19

16 Respondents by External Storage System Capacity Deployed.................................................... 19

17 Respondents by Company Size ................................................................................................... 20

18 Most Used Applications: Mission Critical Versus Non–Mission Critical ........................................ 21

19 SUDS to Workloads Mapping....................................................................................................... 22

©2013 IDC #241840 1

I N T H I S S T U D Y

This IDC study provides analysis of the results of IDC's biannual worldwide survey of

storage administrators. The most recent survey was completed in November 2012

and focused on data use cases for storage deployed within application or general-

purpose servers. The results of the previous survey, conducted in spring/summer

2012, were published in Storage User Demand Study, 2012 — Spring Edition: End

Users Test Different Ways of Using Solid State Storage (IDC #238127, December

2012).

M e t h o d o l o g y

In the second half of 2010, IDC launched a project, Storage User Demand Study, or

SUDS, whose main goal was to analyze current and future trends in end-user

deployments of storage systems in support of major enterprise applications and a

variety of data types. This study expands IDC's traditional vendor-centric assessment

of the storage market from the perspective of product shipments and vendors'

strategies.

The cornerstone of SUDS is the survey of storage administrators across multiple

regions. The most recent survey discussed in this IDC study was conducted in fall

2012 and surveyed 1,005 respondents in 17 countries in eight languages. The

Appendix provides more details on respondent demographics.

Besides the questions carried from survey to survey for historical trending, each

SUDS Survey has a block of questions related to a specific storage technology or

solution. Use of internal storage (i.e., storage deployed within application or general-

purpose servers shipped with three or more hard disk drives or solid state drives) was

a focus of the most recent survey. Results of this part of the survey are also analyzed

in this document.

In addition to analyzing the survey results, IDC also develops quantitative estimates

of how much storage shipped by top storage system suppliers was sold in support of

specific data use cases, which include:

A number of major enterprise applications, such as Oracle applications, SAP, MS

Exchange, and SharePoint

Groups of special applications like those designed for business

intelligence/analytics or implemented only by end users in specific vertical

industries (e.g., PACS in healthcare or CAD/CAM in manufacturing)

Various IT infrastructure segments, such as home directory, virtual server, and

virtual desktop

Storage deployed by content depots for managing vast amounts of fixed content

or by public cloud service providers for providing storage-related service offerings

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Quantitative assessments are not included in this study, although the relative ranking

of the top 3 vendors in each data use case category is provided.

Note: All numbers in this document may not be exact due to rounding.

S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W

Historically, for many years, the enterprise storage systems market was primarily

associated with disk-based storage arrays built by a dozen tier 1 vendors or a larger

group of small suppliers that were focused on a particular technological innovation in

storage or on developing systems for needs of particular industries. However, in the

past few years, the enterprise storage systems market has gone through a major

transformation as new developments disturb the industry at multiple interrelated

levels:

Delivery model. Explosive growth of public and private cloud storage offerings is

one of the biggest drivers behind changes in the storage systems industry. Not

only do end users expand fulfillment of their storage needs beyond their

datacenters and traditional offsite storage facilities into the cloud, but cloud

service providers tend to put different demands on hardware they purchase

focusing on new standards for scalability, management, and economics.

New architectures. Originally designed for niche applications by start-up

companies, architectures such as scale-out or object-based products are now

becoming widely adopted by a variety of industries, while most top vendors have

made acquisitions in this space to penetrate markets they couldn't penetrate with

their traditional systems.

Industry-standard servers. Expansion of scale-out architectures and growing

availability and capabilities of industry-standard servers paved the path for

development of software-based storage (i.e., storage systems created through

deployment of software), which gives a general-purpose server "personality" of a

storage system. The latter would not require any special hardware or experience

and could be done by either an end user or a channel partner or even by a

supplier of traditional storage systems (e.g., HP LeftHand appliances).

IDC's SUDS Survey conducted in fall 2012 was focused on some aspects of the latter

developments (i.e., on the use of general-purpose servers for storage-specific

workloads). The sections that follow provide insights into the findings from this survey.

S e t t i n g t h e B a s e : D e p l o y m e n t s o f

I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, 1Q13, 28%

of all terabytes shipped with enterprise storage systems in 2012 were internal (i.e.,

shipped within application or general-purpose servers with three or more hard disk or

solid state drives). Unlike external storage capacity, more than half of which is still

shipped to end users in Americas, the distribution of internal storage capacity is more

even between regions (see Figure 1).

©2013 IDC #241840 3

APEJ is leading the way in using more internal storage capacity as a proportion of the

overall enterprise storage system terabytes: in 2012, 42% of enterprise storage

system capacity shipped to APEJ users was internal. In comparison, this ratio falls

into the 20–30% range in the United States, Western Europe, CEMA, and Canada.

F I G U R E 1

W o r l d w i d e I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e S y s t e m s C a p a c i t y S h i p p e d S h a r e

b y R e g i o n , 2 0 1 2

Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, 1Q13

Use Cases for Servers with Internal Storage

Servers are used for variety of workloads, from high-demanding databases to low-

profile file and print workloads. The purpose of the discussed survey, however, was to

get more insight on deployments of general-purpose servers for storage-specific

workloads. Figure 2 shows that while the vast majority of survey respondents use

servers for traditional server use cases, such as running a database, running

enterprise applications, and email server, at least a third of them also have some

servers dedicated to storage-specific use cases.

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F I G U R E 2

C u r r e n t U s e o f I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e

Q. What is a primary use of the servers on which internal storage is deployed?

n = 986

Note: Multiple responses were allowed.

Source: IDC's SUDS Survey, fall 2012

However, from the storage capacity perspective, penetration of storage use cases

into the server infrastructure is lighter. Nearly 10% of internal storage capacity, on

average, is used in configurations in which a server functions as a standalone storage

array or an appliance or as a storage node in a modular/distributed storage system

(see Figure 3). Another 11.5% of internal storage capacity is deployed in servers

used as NAS or cloud gateways, or as storage virtualization appliances. These ratios

remain similar in the next 12 months, with a slight drop for average share of internal

storage capacity allocated to use cases beyond database, enterprise applications, or

email servers.

©2013 IDC #241840 5

F I G U R E 3

A v e r a g e A l l o c a t i o n o f I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e C a p a c i t y t o V a r i o u s U s e

C a s e s C u r r e n t l y a n d i n t h e N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s

Q. What is a primary use of the servers on which internal storage is deployed? Please try to

estimate percentage of internal storage capacity within these server systems used for

particular use cases.

Q. What will be the primary use of the servers on which internal storage is deployed? Please

try to estimate percentage of internal storage capacity within these server systems used for

particular use cases in the next 12 months.

n = 986

Note: The "dedicated to storage" category includes the following options: standalone storage

array or storage appliance and storage node in a modular/distributed storage system.


To put this into perspective, IDC estimates that more than 8EB of internal storage

capacity was shipped by system OEMs in 2012, and 11EB will be shipped in 2013.

This doesn't include capacity purchased by end users directly from HDD or SSD

manufacturers or through other channels beyond system OEMs.

On the regional side, respondents from APEJ use a higher share of their internal

storage capacity in configurations dedicated to storage workloads than respondents

from the Americas and EMEA. Moreover, they expect to dedicate an even higher

share of internal storage capacity to storage-specific configurations, while

respondents from the Americas and EMEA plan to decrease slightly the use of their

servers as storage devices (see Figure 4).

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F I G U R E 4

A v e r a g e A l l o c a t i o n o f I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e C a p a c i t y t o S t o r a g e - S p e c i f i c

U s e C a s e s C u r r e n t l y a n d i n t h e N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s b y R e g i o n







Note: Means only for the following data use cases are taken into consideration: standalone

storage array or storage appliance and storage node in a modular/distributed storage system.


This survey doesn't reach large cloud service providers, which tend to built storage

infrastructure by themselves or using original design manufacturers. In this case,

storage systems are built of industry-standard components, typically x86 servers.

Thus IDC believes that the allocation of internal storage capacity is fairly different for

these service provider datacenters compared with traditional datacenters, mostly

covered by the SUDS Survey.

Small businesses (organizations with <100 employees in the United States or with

<50 employees in other countries) were another category of end users with

intentionally light representation in the survey. However, from other research, IDC

sees that small organizations are more likely to have their entire compute and storage

infrastructure centered on servers, unlike larger organizations, which have a stronger

split between server and storage infrastructures. As a result, and it's confirmed by the

SUDS Survey, small organizations use and will continue to use more internal storage

capacity in general-purpose servers (also called file and print) than in servers that

were transformed into storage arrays or nodes by deployment of storage software

(see Figure 5).

©2013 IDC #241840 7

F I G U R E 5

A v e r a g e A l l o c a t i o n o f I n t e r n a l S t o r a g e C a p a c i t y t o V a r i o u s U s e

C a s e s b y C o m p a n y S i z e







n = 986 (by company size: small businesses, n = 51, medium-sized businesses, n = 411; large

businesses, n = 524)

Note: The "dedicated to storage" category includes the following options: standalone storage

array or storage appliance and storage node in a modular/distributed storage system.


Storage Software Platforms: Microsoft in the Lead, Smaller Vendors

and Open Source Gaining

There are plenty of storage software platforms available on the market for deployment

on industry-standard servers and defining server "personality" as storage. IDC's

SUDS Survey results show that Microsoft Storage Server is a clear leader in this

space among the respondents. However, results also reveal that end users often use

multiple storage software platforms on their servers, and while top platforms are

expected to keep the leading positions, the adoption of offerings from smaller vendors

like Nexenta and open source solutions like Openfiler will be noticeably increasing in

the next 12 months, with some gain also expected for Red Hat Storage Server and

Open-E Data Storage Software (see Figure 6).

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F I G U R E 6

A d o p t i o n o f S t o r a g e S o f t w a r e P l a t f o r m s C u r r e n t l y a n d i n t h e

N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s

Q. What storage software platforms run on servers that function as storage nodes or

standalone storage arrays?

Q. What storage software platforms will run on servers that function as storage nodes or




Midsize businesses are expected to drive higher adoption of almost all storage

software platforms included in this survey. At the same time, large businesses are

also expected to play an important role in the growing adoption of Openfiler and even

more so — NexentaStor (see Figures 7 and 8). Respondents from small businesses

are excluded from this analysis because of their intentionally low sample size.

©2013 IDC #241840 9

F I G U R E 7


N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s b y M e d i u m - S i z e d B u s i n e s s e s

Q. What storage software platforms run on servers that function as storage nodes or




Notes:

Multiple responses were allowed.

Medium-sized businesses are defined as companies with 100–999 employees worldwide.


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F I G U R E 8


N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s b y L a r g e B u s i n e s s e s

Q. What storage software platforms runs on servers that function as storage nodes or




Notes:

Multiple responses were allowed.

Large businesses are defined as companies with 1,000+ employees worldwide.


Virtual Storage Appliances

As adoption of server virtualization spreads, virtualization platforms deliver more and

more functions that help end users to increase efficiency of server resources.

Virtualization of available storage capacity within servers is one of such functions.

The competitive landscape in this segment is not as crowded as in other storage

segments, with VMware vSphere and HP LeftHand VSA being the most known virtual

storage appliance products.

©2013 IDC #241840 11

Respondents to the SUDS Survey demonstrated a high level of awareness and

decent level of adoption of VSA solutions (see Figure 9).

F I G U R E 9

S t a t u s o f A d o p t i o n o f V i r t u a l S t o r a g e A p p l i a n c e P r o d u c t s C u r r e n t l y

a n d i n t h e N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s

Q. Is all or part of storage capacity within the servers used in a shared storage pool through

implementation of virtual storage appliance software?

Q. Will all or part of storage capacity within the servers be used in a shared storage pool

through implementation of virtual storage appliance software?


Figure 10 shows the rate of adoption of various VSA products by respondents who

currently deploy VSA and respondents who plan to deploy VSA offerings in the next

12 months. As expected, VMware vSphere and HP VSA offerings were the top 2

adopted products now and in the next 12 months, with a slight increase in adoption

for HP virtual storage appliance products. Adoption of other two offerings in this

space, NetApp ONTAP-V and Nexenta VSA, was expected to remain relatively low.

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F I G U R E 1 0

A d o p t i o n o f S e l e c t V i r t u a l S t o r a g e A p p l i a n c e P r o d u c t s C u r r e n t l y

a n d i n t h e N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s

Q. What virtual storage appliance software is used for sharing internal storage resources?

Q. What virtual storage appliance software will be used for sharing internal storage resources?



External Storage Data Use Cases — Top Vendor Positioning

With every SUDS project, IDC estimates how many terabytes of external storage

systems were shipped in support of top enterprise applications and support of IT

infrastructure and revenue of top storage system suppliers associated with these

shipments. In fall 2012, IDC estimated that just under half of the external storage

system capacity shipped in the first half of 2012 was shipped in support of major

enterprise applications (see the full list of applications in the Appendix), slightly under

40% for major segments of IT infrastructure support (which includes home directory,

virtual desktop, and virtual server infrastructure as well as content depots and public

cloud infrastructure), and 12% for other data use cases (see Figure 11).

©2013 IDC #241840 13

F I G U R E 1 1

D i s t r i b u t i o n o f E x t e r n a l E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e C a p a c i t y S h i p p e d

A m o n g T h r e e D a t a U s e C a s e G r o u p s , 1 H 1 2

Note: Estimates are modeled based on the numbers published in the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly

Disk Storage Systems Tracker, SUDS Survey results, and other IDC research.

Source: IDC, 2013

Table 1 provides insights into ranking of top enterprise storage system suppliers in

various data use case categories based on storage system capacity shipped in

support of these data use cases in the first half of 2012. The ranking remained largely

unchanged from that for the full year of 2011 (see Storage User Demand Study, 2012

— Spring Edition: End Users Test Different Ways of Using Solid State Storage, IDC

#238127, December 2012).

EMC kept its lead in almost all segments, followed by NetApp, which was ranked

second in all segments except in content depots and public cloud infrastructure in

which it was ranked once again number 1 supplier of enterprise storage system

capacity. EMC also appeared in the top 3 list in the latter category. HP and IBM

ranked third in most categories, with HP holding the number 2 position in Microsoft

SharePoint and content depots and public cloud infrastructure segments.

For factory revenue, the ranking looks slightly different, with more ties for the number

2 position caused by variations in system pricing and class of systems shipped into

particular data use cases (see Table 2).

EMC got the first ranking in all categories except content depots and public cloud

infrastructure, in which it was in the second position after HP and tied with NetApp.

NetApp also moved down in ranking in Microsoft SharePoint compared with its

position in the shipped terabytes ranking, while IBM moved up in ranking in several

categories as a seller of higher-end systems.

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T A B L E 1

T o p 3 E x t e r n a l E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e S y s t e m V e n d o r s b y S e l e c t D a t a U s e C a s e

B a s e d o n T e r a b y t e s S h i p p e d , 1 H 1 2

Rank

Business

Intelligence

and Analytics

Microsoft

Exchange

Microsoft

SharePoint

Oracle

Applications SAP

Home

Directory

VDI and

Virtual

Server

Industry-

Specific

Applications

Content Depots

and Public Cloud

Infrastructure

1 EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC NetApp

2 NetApp NetApp HP,

NetApp

(tie)

NetApp NetApp NetApp NetApp NetApp HP

3 IBM HP Hitachi, IBM

(tie)

IBM HP, IBM

(tie)

HP, IBM

(tie)

IBM Dell, EMC (tie)

VDI = virtual desktop infrastructure

Note: Ranking is based on IDC's estimates of external enterprise storage system capacity shipped in support of specific

data use cases.

Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, 2Q12, and SUDS Survey, 2012

T A B L E 2

T o p 3 E x t e r n a l E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e S y s t e m V e n d o r s b y S e l e c t D a t a U s e C a s e

B a s e d o n F a c t o r y R e v e n u e , 1 H 1 2

Rank

Business

Intelligence

and Analytics

Microsoft

Exchange

Microsoft

SharePoint

Oracle

Applications SAP

Home

Directory

VDI and

Virtual

Server

Industry-

Specific

Applications

Content Depots

and Public Cloud

Infrastructure

1 EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC EMC HP

2 NetApp HP,

NetApp

(tie)

HP, IBM

(tie)

IBM,

NetApp (tie)

IBM,

NetApp

(tie)

NetApp NetApp NetApp EMC, NetApp

(tie)

3 IBM HP HP, IBM

(tie)

IBM IBM

VDI = virtual desktop infrastructure

Note: Ranking is based on IDC's estimates of external enterprise storage system factory revenue for systems shipped in

support of specific data use cases.

Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, 2Q12, and SUDS Survey, 2012

©2013 IDC #241840 15

F U T U R E O U T L O O K

S t o r a g e C a p a c i t y : N o S i g n i f i c a n t S h i f t s

i n P l a n s

Respondents to IDC's fall 2012 SUDS Survey shared slightly more positive plans on

external storage capacity purchases for the next 12 months compared with the spring

2012 survey respondents (see Figure 12). However, shifts were not significant. While

a slightly higher percentage of respondents are planning to purchase new storage

capacity and remove old capacity from service, there were no changes on plans for

purchasing substantial amounts of capacity (>10TB).

F I G U R E 1 2

P l a n s t o D e p l o y a n d R e t i r e E x t e r n a l E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e S y s t e m s

i n t h e N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s b y S t o r a g e C a p a c i t y

Q. How many terabytes of external storage systems is your organization planning to deploy

within the next 12 months?

Q. How many terabytes of external storage systems is your organization planning to retire

(remove from service) within the next 12 months?

Source: IDC's SUDS Survey, fall 2012 and spring 2012

On average, respondents planned to remove 16% of currently deployed external

storage system capacity. This ratio was in line with the spring survey results and

slightly lower than 18% from the previous year's survey. Respondents from North

America were most cautious, with more than half of 324 respondents indicating that

they plan to remove no storage capacity from service, and a quarter of respondents

16 #241840 ©2013 IDC

planned to buy no storage capacity in the next 12 months. On the other end of the

spectrum, respondents from APEJ continued to be the most active in terms of storage

capacity purchasing and retirement: 94% of 223 respondents plan to buy some

storage capacity in the next 12 months, and 68% plan to remove some capacity from

service during the same period.

Testing Interest to Converged and Integrated Systems

Adoption of converged infrastructures and integrated systems is one of the trends

IDC started observing as more vendors offer end users a variety of solutions that

integrate multiple hardware components (servers, storage, and networking), common

system management software and, in the case of integrated solutions, software to run

specific applications.

IDC's SUDS Survey revealed end users' moderate plans to purchase these classes of

systems in the next 12 months, with more interest to converged (19.9% of

respondents) than integrated (16.9% of respondents) systems (see Figure 13; see the

Appendix for the complete definition of storage system types provided to survey

respondents).

F I G U R E 1 3

P l a n s t o P u r c h a s e S t o r a g e S y s t e m s i n t h e N e x t 1 2 M o n t h s b y

S y s t e m T y p e

Q. What type of storage systems you plan to purchase from the storage system vendors in the

next 12 months?

n = 638


Respondents from emerging regions (APEJ, CEMA, and Latin America) were most

interested in purchasing converged and integrated systems, with 25–30% of

respondents expressing interest in purchasing converged and 15–30% interested in

purchasing integrated systems in the next 12 months. At the same time, only 10% of

©2013 IDC #241840 17

respondents from North America and 16% of respondents from Western Europe said

they were planning to buy converged systems. For integrated systems, the

percentage of interested respondents was even lower — 8% in both North America

and Western Europe. As with other new solutions on the storage systems market, we

often see that end users from emerging regions less tied to legacy infrastructure and

processes tend to be quicker in adopting or at least trying these new solutions.

Likewise, large businesses, which usually have more technological expertise than

midsize organizations and are constantly searching for efficient solutions, tend to be

early adopters of new solutions and technologies. The survey shows that the same is

true with converged and integrated systems: around 20% of respondents from large

businesses and around 15% of respondents from midsize organizations said that they

plan to buy converged or integrated systems in the next 12 months.

Average Useful Life of Storage Systems: High End and Scale Out

Live the Longest

Although scale-out systems are not adopted at as high rates as traditional midrange

and high-end systems, they are expected to be among the longest-living systems

(see Figure 14). The nature of scale-out systems plays a key role in the long useful

life cycles as system modules can be replaced and updated with no or minimal

interruption for system operations. For traditional systems, the useful life is well

correlated with the system class. More complex and strategic business high-end

systems deployed for business-critical applications tend to stay on the floor for longer

periods of time, while simpler and tactical entry-level systems live shorter lives on

average.

F I G U R E 1 4

A v e r a g e U s e f u l L i f e o f E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e S y s t e m s b y C l a s s

Q. What is an average useful life of storage systems in your organization? Please provide an

answer by a system class.


18 #241840 ©2013 IDC

E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E

IDC's fall 2012 SUDS Survey revealed several important points on how end users

deploy their storage resources, in particular resources available to them through

storage capacity installed within general-purpose and application servers. Although

these servers continue to be used predominantly for particular server applications,

IDC sees that industry developments will lead to higher adoption of general-purpose

industry-standard servers for purely storage use cases (for a detailed discussion, see

IDC's Worldwide Software-Based (Software-Defined) Storage Taxonomy, 2013, IDC

#240500, April 2013).

We already see a number of top storage system suppliers focusing some of their

messaging around software-defined storage strategies. At the same time, some

smaller companies that offered their solutions to end users for a number of years

already have the advantage of recognition, especially, as survey results suggest,

outside of the Americas. However, this advantage might be threatened in the longer

term by formal entry of the top vendors into this market.

L E A R N M O R E

R e l a t e d R e s e a r c h

Worldwide Enterprise Storage Systems 2013–2017 Forecast: Customer

Landscape Is Changing, Defining Demand for New Solutions (IDC #241033, May

2013)

IDC's Worldwide Software-Based (Software-Defined) Storage Taxonomy, 2013

(IDC #240500, April 2013)

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Integrated Infrastructure and Platform Tracker

Taxonomy, 2013 (IDC #240312, April 2013)

New and Growing Channels for Storage Industry Terabyte Shipments (IDC

#239953, March 2013)

The Copy Data Problem: An Order of Magnitude Analysis (IDC #239875, March

2013)

A p p e n d i x

Survey Respondent Demographics

Figures 15–18 provide details on the demographics of respondents to IDC's fall 2012

SUDS Survey and their categorization of major enterprise applications as critical

versus noncritical.

©2013 IDC #241840 19

F I G U R E 1 5

R e s p o n d e n t s b y R e g i o n

Note: Respondents are from 17 countries.


F I G U R E 1 6

R e s p o n d e n t s b y E x t e r n a l S t o r a g e S y s t e m C a p a c i t y D e p l o y e d


20 #241840 ©2013 IDC

F I G U R E 1 7

R e s p o n d e n t s b y C o m p a n y S i z e


©2013 IDC #241840 21

F I G U R E 1 8

M o s t U s e d A p p l i c a t i o n s : M i s s i o n C r i t i c a l V e r s u s N o n – M i s s i o n C r i t i c a l

n = 1,005


How Are SUDS and Server/Storage Workloads Related to Each Other?

The short answer to this question is that they are not. That said, the research is

conducted in such a way that the results support both SUDS and server/storage

workloads. Some basic differences are shown in Table 3.

SUDS leverages a survey of storage administrators asking them about the way their

organizations' storage is deployed and used. The enterprise storage systems team

analyzes the survey results to provide a deep-dive look at storage systems

deployments (from the SUDS Survey) versus storage systems shipments (as found in

the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker and enterprise storage

systems forecast). SUDS also looks at the deployment of storage for a select number

of enterprise applications and IT infrastructure support segments. IDC research

suggests that these data use cases make up for roughly 70% or more of the

22 #241840 ©2013 IDC

applications deployed by enterprises and therefore are an acceptable proxy for how

enterprises leverage deployed storage systems.

Figure 19 illustrates how SUDS data use cases map against server/storage workload

categories.

T A B L E 3

S e r v e r / S t o r a g e W o r k l o a d s a n d S U D S C o m p a r i s o n

Server/Storage Workloads SUDS

Geographic reach of survey United States Worldwide (17 countries, 8 languages)

Number of respondents 800 1,005

Type of survey respondent Server administrators Storage administrators

Top-down/bottom-up approach Top down Bottoms up

Technology focus Servers/compute Storage/data

Source: IDC, 2013

F I G U R E 1 9

S U D S t o W o r k l o a d s M a p p i n g

Source: IDC, 2013

©2013 IDC #241840 23

D e f i n i t i o n s

Verticals

Table 4 shows key subindustries included in the primary vertical markets.

T A B L E 4

V e r t i c a l I n d u s t r y C a t e g o r i z a t i o n

Vertical Examples

Finance Banking, insurance, financial services, credit institutions

Communications and media Publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications

Construction Heavy construction and special trade contractors

Consumer and recreational services Services focused primarily on the consumer such as hotels, entertainment

services, and social services

Discrete manufacturing Automotive, apparel, furniture, equipment/machinery, publishing,

electronics, leather

Government Local, state, federal

Healthcare providers Hospitals, outpatient services, physician office, medical testing

Insurance Healthcare insurance payers, life insurance, property and causality,

brokers, and other insurance

Private education Private elementary and secondary education, private colleges and

universities, other private organizations providing educational services

Process manufacturing Food, paper, petroleum/chemicals/pharmaceutical, stone/clay/glass,

primary metals

Professional services Business, legal, engineering, management, IT, real estate, or Internet-

related services

Public education Educational services and library/archives

Resources Fuel extraction, agriculture, mining, and other extractive industries

Retail Eating and drinking establishments

Securities and investment services The variety of institutions that facilitate and execute capital transfers

Transportation and transportation services Trucking and warehousing, rail, water, and other support activities such as

air control and towing

Service providers/telecommunications/cable Cable, satellite, and telecommunications service providers

Utilities Sanitary services

Wholesale Import and export business

Source: IDC, 2013

24 #241840 ©2013 IDC

Enterprise Storage System

For the purposes of the SUDS Survey, an enterprise storage system is defined as a

system of three of more hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid state drives (SSDs)

dedicated to storing data. The system might be located within a server cabinet or

enclosure (internal storage) or might be a standalone system either on a network

(Ethernet or Fibre Channel) or connected directly to servers. Storage on desktops,

laptops, and workstations, as well as external standalone drives or storage devices

with one or two disk drives, are not included in this definition.

Data Use Cases

Table 5 outlines data use cases covered by SUDS and groups them into three

categories: major enterprise application support, IT infrastructure support, and

"other."

T A B L E 5

S U D S D a t a U s e C a s e s b y G r o u p

Data Use Case Group Data Use Case

Major enterprise application support MS Exchange

MS SharePoint

Oracle Applications

SAP

Storage dedicated to business intelligence/business analytics

Industry-specific application (e.g., PACS, CAD/CAM, GIS)

IT infrastructure support Home directory

Virtual infrastructure support (virtual server and VDI)

Content depots and public cloud infrastructure

Other Other

Source: IDC, 2013

Application

Oracle Appl icat ions

For the "application" entitled Oracle Applications, respondents were advised to

include Oracle applications such as ERP and CRM.

©2013 IDC #241840 25

Cloud Serv ice Infrastructure

In SUDS, one of the "applications" about which we surveyed is called cloud service

infrastructure. Respondents were instructed that "if your organization provides

storage services to other organizations, please include the storage capacity dedicated

to providing these services into 'cloud service infrastructure.' "

Industry Speci f ic

For the "application" entitled industry specific, respondents were advised that

examples of this type of "application" included PACS and CAD.

Storage Class

In terms of future plans, the SUDS Survey provided examples of storage class. These

examples are provided in Table 6.

T A B L E 6

E x a m p l e s o f S t o r a g e S y s t e m F a m i l i e s i n S t o r a g e C l a s s

Storage Class Examples

Traditional entry-level systems HP MSA P2000, Dell PowerVault MD, IBM DS3000, etc.

Traditional midrange systems EMC VNX, HP LeftHand P4000, Dell EqualLogic, etc.

Traditional high-end systems EMC VMAX, IBM DS8000, HDS VSP, etc.

Scale-out systems IBM XIV and SONAS, EMC Atmos, etc.

Converged systems (general purpose-built systems with

pre-integrated compute, storage, and networking

components)

EMC Vblock, NetApp FlexPod, HP CloudSystem, etc.

Integrated systems (purpose-built systems with pre-

integrated compute and storage components)

HP E5000 messaging system, Oracle Exadata Database

Machine, etc.

Third-party storage services Cloud

Source: IDC, 2013

S y n o p s i s

This IDC study provides analysis of the results of IDC's Storage User Demand Study

(SUDS) Survey completed in fall 2012. Conducted in countries across the globe, the

survey focused on end-user deployments of external and internal enterprise storage

systems for various data use cases including support for major enterprise applications

and IT infrastructure.

26 #241840 ©2013 IDC

"It is very typical to talk about external storage systems (i.e., systems deployed

outside of a server) in the context of enterprise storage in general. This is well

justified given the size of this market — over $26 billion — and its own ecosystem,"

says Natalya Yezhkova, research director, Storage Systems. "The other part of the

enterprise storage market — internal storage — is typically downplayed. At the same

time, nearly half of the respondents to the SUDS Survey indicated that they use some

of the servers deployed in their datacenters as standalone storage arrays or storage

appliances. While penetration rates into storage capacity are lower, the interest to this

market is growing among top storage system suppliers, which will drive this

penetration up in the future."

C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e

This IDC research document was published as part of an IDC continuous intelligence

service, providing written research, analyst interactions, telebriefings, and

conferences. Visit www.idc.com to learn more about IDC subscription and consulting

services. To view a list of IDC offices worldwide, visit www.idc.com/offices. Please

contact the IDC Hotline at 800.343.4952, ext. 7988 (or +1.508.988.7988) or

[email protected] for information on applying the price of this document toward the

purchase of an IDC service or for information on additional copies or Web rights.

Copyright 2013 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved.

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