ESG and Scality report: AI, automation driving need for all-flash object storage as primary application data storage

 San Francisco, CA – Jan. 27, 2021 – Digital business initiatives like automation and artificial intelligence demand high-performance and massive capacity storage. In turn, this is driving adoption of on-premises all-flash object storage to provide customers’ top need — comprehensive data protection at scale. That’s according to a new research paper released today from Enterprise Strategy Group and Scality®, the object storage pioneer. The full report, The Digital Era Is Fueling Adoption of All-Flash Object Storage, is available for download here. ESG’s prior research found that AI/ML and analytics are the business differentiators IT needs. Accordingly, 64% of IT decision-makers using AI/ML expect to increase spending in 2021. To meet the AI challenge, the report finds that IT leaders are transitioning their data storage ecosystems to run on all-flash object storage, encroaching on the territory of traditional primary storage solutions. All-flash object storage powers the heavy workloads necessitated by these initiatives by quickly giving access to large volumes of unstructured data. The most significant all-flash object storage benefits include accelerating AI/ML environments, empowering business intelligence/analytics, increasing infrastructure performance and utilization, and improved application development. The report finds:

• 77% of IT professionals at organizations currently using all-flash object storage say the technology has had a high impact or has been a game-changing technology in their on-prem storage environment.
• Similarly, among organizations using or interested in all-flash object storage, 77% say new workloads or initiatives are driving demand for it.

Rapid adoption has already begun:

• 95% of respondents are using flash storage within all or part of their object storage environments; 23% say they already have an all-flash object storage solution.
• 87% of respondents at organizations not using all-flash object storage today expect to evaluate an on-premises all-flash object storage solution within the next 12 months.
• 57% of respondents ranked data protection and reliability as a highly important attribute of all-flash object storage solutions; 23% ranked performance as a top attribute.

“Digital business initiatives are fueling an increased emphasis on creating, storing and using data. This trend has led to increased adoption of on-premises all-flash object storage. It is early in the adoption phase but will become pervasive”
Scott Sinclair, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group