Next-Generation Storage is Not Storage Anymore

Looking at the new companies in enterprise storage, it’s obvious that storage just isn’t storage anymore. Even more traditional storage vendors are adding software as a service and data services, and these are major selling points rather than the ability to store data. At Storage Field Day in March 2022, none of the companies is presenting block and file storage, SAN or NAS, or any of the other traditional storage technologies. Is the storage array “a solved problem” or are we just looking at the new application-centric market? Pure Storage is perhaps the most traditional storage company presenting this week, but they’re coming to talk about Pure1 and storage as a service. The same is true of companies like Hammerspace and SIOS that are focused on data distribution and availability. VAST Data, RackTop Systems, Fungible, and MinIO are developing storage solutions but they are aimed at special use cases, like data analytics, security, high-performance, and cloud. Then there’s Intel, who is coming to Storage Field Day to give an update on their Optane technology, which promises to fundamentally change the entire storage paradigm. Clearly, next-generation storage isn’t storage anymore, it’s something altogether new and different!