STORAGE ARCHITECTURE/ MASTER: The Adoption of Intelligence in the Fabric

STORAGE ARCHITECTURE/MASTER:

The Adoption of Intelligence in the Fabric

End Users Speak Out

Nancy HurleySenior AnalystEnterprise Strategy Group

Research objectives

• Are end users interested in the prospect of network-based storage intelligence?

• Which specific storage services will move to the network? When? In what order?

• On what platforms do users want intelligent storage network solutions delivered?

• From whom will users buy intelligent storage network solutions?

Research methodology Quantitative research:

• Online survey conducted in late April/early May 2004

• Storage professionals and IT managers at US and Canadian private and public sector organizations

• To qualify, respondents had to make or influence storage networking purchasing decisions

• Two sets of questions: One for organizations with an intelligent storage network solution, another for those without

• 422 total responses

• Final sample: 210 qualified surveys (45 with intelligent storage network, 165 without)

• Secondary survey: 100 qualified surveys (34 with intelligent storage network)

Qualitative research:

• In-depth telephone interviews with storage professionals from enterprise and SMB organizations

• Mix of users with and without intelligent storage network solutions

Overall findings

Early adopters see significant benefits

• Cost reductions

• Ease management burden

Early Adopters intend to move more

services into the fabric

General market shows significant interest in

adoption -- question is, when?

Profile of early adopters

Compared to the general market, early

adopters have:

• Higher annual revenue

• Bigger storage budgets

• Higher storage capacities

• More SANs

• More data on the SAN

• Higher SAN port count

• More multi-site SANs

Top reasons for adoption

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Deploy a tiered storage architecture

Deploy storage services betweenheterogeneous storage systems

Improve our ability to provisionstorage capacity

Simplify the management of ourstorage resources

End user quotes

“The primary reason we went with an

intelligent storage network solution was

that we didn’t want to be dependent on

any one hardware vendor. I want the

flexibility and economic benefits of a

heterogeneous infrastructure.”

End user quotes (2)

“To me, intelligence in the fabric

revolves around virtualizing our storage

environment so that we can automate

everyday storage tasks like provisioning.

I know that we’re not getting any more

headcount so we need to move towards

true policy-based storage management.”

Of users that have already implemented an intelligent storage network:

• 79%79% have reduced annual storage have reduced annual storage hardware spending (28% of users by hardware spending (28% of users by 20% or more)20% or more)

• 72%72% have reduced annual storage have reduced annual storage software spending (25% of users by software spending (25% of users by 20% or more)20% or more)

• 72%72% have reduced annual storage have reduced annual storage administration costs (30% of users by administration costs (30% of users by 20% or more)20% or more)

Respondents who have not yet deployed an intelligent storage network solution are more skeptical…

48% of those respondents believe their organization wouldn’t reduce storage hardware spending at all.

Disparity: Non-adopters’ expectations vs. early adopters’ results

Expected vs. Actual Savings as a Result of Deploying an Intelligent Storage Network Solution

10.6%9.0%

13.3%

19.7%

14.0%17.4%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

Percent AnnualStorage

Hardw areSavings

Percent AnnualStorage

Softw areSavings

Percent AnnualStorage

AdministrationSavings

General MarketExpected Savings

Early AdopterActual Savings

Early adopters satisfaction survey

Early adopter satisfaction

“I think we’ve saved a tremendous amount of

money by deploying an intelligent network

solution. I mean, I could argue that we’ve

reduced our storage hardware budget by a factor

of 5 or even 10! Now, I can also deploy Fibre

Channel or ATA drives that are 5-10 times

cheaper, and mix and match them throughout

our environment depending on the class of

storage required.”

Moving more into the fabric -- Current & planned network-based storage services: Early adopters

Moving more into the fabric -- Current & planned network-based storage services: Early adopters (2)

General market interest

"Please rate your level of interest in intelligent storage network solutions."

Very Interested15%

Interested27%

Somewhat interested

43%

Not at all interested

1%Not very

interested10%

Don't know4%

When will we see widespread adoption?

• 42% who have not deployed an intelligent storage network solution say they are either “very interested” or “interested” in doing so.

• 6% say they will deploy a solution in the next 12 months, and another 15% within 24 months. All told, 27% already believe they will deploy at some point.

• Only 7% of users who don’t currently have an intelligent storage network solution say they wouldn’t consider one. 40% would consider one even though they have no plans to deploy at this time and 26% simply don’t know at this time.

• Significant educational opportunity/marketing challenge for vendors

Percent of non-adopters that are "very interested" in intelligent storage networks, by number of SAN fabrics (N =

17).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

One 2 to 5 6 to 10 11 to 20 More than 20

Interest in intelligence in fabric tracks with early adopter findings

Respondents who would prefer to run the following storage services at the intelligent storage network level, by early

adopters vs. non-adopters.

30%

28%

25%

30%

29%

29%

23%

31%

30%

30%

33%

42%

39%

40%

53%

56%

51%

49%

49%

58%

51%

53%

60%

60%

60%

71%

64%

73%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Policy-Based Data Retention/Archiving

Policy-Based Storage Tiering

Virtual Tape

Data Migration

Continuous Backup

Backup

Mirroring (RAID 1)

Snapshot

Asynchronous Replication

Synchronous Replication

Quality of Service (QoS)

Virtualization

Provisioning

Volume Management

Non-Adopters Early Adopters

From whom will users buy?

If you were to purchase an intelligent storage network solution, how important is it that the software functionality be that of your

existing vendor as opposed to a new vendor?

Somew hat important -- w e w ould prefer to

use our existing softw are but w ould consider alternative

solutions, 39%

Not important -- w e w ould select a solution based on functionality rather than existing

vendor relationships, 15%

Don't know , 15% Very important -- w e w ould only select a solution if it included

the same softw are w e currently use, 31%

Intelligent fabric platform preferences"Which type of intelligent network solution is your organization most

likely to deploy?" (Percent of all respondents, N = 96)

Don't know31%

Purpose-built storage services appliance

(w ithout fabric sw itching)

17%

Softw are-only solution running on standard

PC hardw are5%

SAN sw itch w ith blade-based storage

services (storage services run on blade

ports only)19%

SAN sw itch w ith integrated storage services (storage

services run on every sw itch port)

28%

End user purchase criteriaHow important would each of the following criteria be in

selecting an intelligent storage networking solution? (Mean average of non-adopter responses based on scale of 1 [very

important] to 5 [not at all important], N = 165)

2.51

2.30

2.24

2.04

1.72

1.71

1.65

1.62

1.53

1.53

1.37

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3

Existing relationship with vendor

Certifications by major storage, switch, andserver vendors

Vendor's interoperability matrix

Reputation of vendor

Ease of deployment

Features of software

Ease of management

Cost

Service and support

Performance of hardware

Reliability

End user platform preferences

Early Adopters more apt to want services at

every port

Non-adopters still need education; 39% did not

have preference vs. 13% early adopters

Expect users will employ a mix of appliances and

switches

Users are open to adopting from startups

Percent of users familiar with vendors’ “intelligent” solutions

Cisco (57%)

HP (52%)

IBM (52%)

VERITAS (51%)

EMC (44%)

Brocade (28%)

Conclusions

Vendors need to educate users on benefits• Cost savings message NOT coming across

• Still confusion about what “intelligence” really means

Anybody’s market, but switch vendors seem to have greater mindshare

Believe intelligence in the fabric will see large-scale adoption in 18-24 months