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Rapidly growing volumes of enterprise data require dedicated caretaking to ensure information is accessible and protected, making storage management a crucial component of a corporate data strategy.
Enterprises that rely on large volumes of data look to storage management, including storage software, to help them hold enormous amounts of information, often in the form of unstructured data. Storage management, which includes data protection, is also critical for a variety of enterprise operations, from running customer-facing applications to gathering internal business intelligence (BI).
See below to learn all about the market of storage management and its technologies:
The Storage Management Market
- Growth of the Storage Management Market
- Storage Management Features
- Benefits of Storage Management
- Storage Management Use Cases
- Storage Management Providers
Growth of the Storage Management Market
Expert Market Research predicts a 26% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the data storage market, including storage management, from 2021 to 2027. Fortune Business Insights expects the global cloud storage market to increase from $76.43 billion in 2021 to $390.33 by 2028.
In its report on the “next-generation storage market,” Mordor Intelligence cites advancements in the smart technology and cloud computing markets, highlighting the need for users to quickly and easily access stored data. In addition, storage management is critical in industries that must store large amounts of unstructured data, such as health care, retail, and finance.
Also read: How to Protect Endpoints While Your Employees Work Remotely
Storage Management Features
Top storage management providers typically offer the following features in their offerings:
- Support for multiple storage environments: Management providers often support a variety of storage locations. The best example is a multicloud strategy, which allows customers to place data in multiple cloud storage systems, including a combination of public and private.
- Flexible cost management: Not all data is best stored in one place, and management providers allow users to move data to the most cost-effective location. Rarely accessed data is cheaper to keep in an archive store, while data for critical applications and workloads belongs in a hot storage environment.
- Storage monitoring: Users are able to view their storage systems’ network traffic and security and manage personnel access.
- Data analytics: When properly classified and managed, stored data can provide a range of actionable enterprise-wide information to companies.
Benefits of Storage Management
Two major benefits of successful storage management include more efficient data storage and more secure data.
Managing unstructured data and growing volumes is difficult, especially when budgets are tight, but companies that develop a balanced approach to management will reap the benefits, according to Eric Bassier, senior director of products at Quantum, a storage management provider.
In a recent survey by Quantum on data storage, IT leaders said data management and ransomware are among the top challenges they’re facing.
“The biggest challenges are around managing unstructured data growth and the gap between storage capacity growth and infrastructure budgets,” Bassier said.
“Since most of the data being generated will be cold or inactive, at least for much of its life cycle, enterprises that employ a data management strategy that considers hot, warm, and cold data can manage data across its life cycle more efficiently and gain value from that data at every stage.”
Storage management allows organizations to better handle their masses of unstructured data, transferring it to the appropriate location depending on how frequently it will be accessed.
Security-focused approaches to storage management can, for instance, help companies protect data against one of the top cyber threats — ransomware. Quantum’s research reveals that 40% of surveyed businesses experienced a ransomware attack in the last two years, according to Bassier.
“82% of these organizations defaulted to paying the ransom,” he said. “In 2022, we expect enterprises to increase investment in building cyber-resilient infrastructures, including increased investment in secure offline storage, such as tape.”
Emphasizing security in storage infrastructure is critical for enterprises that want to successfully manage data. Cybersecurity and storage management are no longer two separate markets. They’re gradually melding as enterprises become more protective of their data. A carefully managed and secured storage environment provides enterprises with greater confidence in their ability to protect data.
Also read: Best Backup Solutions for Ransomware Protection
Storage Management Use Cases
Storage professionals report using storage management tools in multiple ways, particularly for monitoring and insights:
“[OnCommand Insight] helps to monitor and manage organization resources and capacity. Its dashboard gives [users] end-to-end visibility of [the] entire infrastructure.” -an IT services business consultant, review of NetApp OnCommand Insight at Gartner Peer Insights
“OnCommand Insight has helped us a number of times when troubleshooting performance issues on our filers. It has also been able to show us and other teams within our company where the real issue is (other apps or servers being bullies).” -a senior NAS administrator, review of NetApp OnCommand Insight at Gartner Peer Insights
“Reporting and alerting helps to track all information about our storage activities,” and the software “provides full details of issues.” -a senior analyst in IT, review of SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor at Gartner Peer Insights
“SRM gives a high-level picture of how the different storage systems are working on the platform and can be used to identify the usage pattern and space consumed.” -an associate consultant, review of SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor at Gartner Peer Insights
Top Storage Management Providers
These are some of the leading companies in the storage management market:
- AWS
- Dell
- IBM
- NetApp
- Pure Storage
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Microsoft
- Hitachi Vantara
- Nutanix
- Red Hat
Read next: Best Storage Management Software
