As we face another year of economic uncertainty, one thing is certain, technology advancement will again prevail in 2023. Here at Zadara we see the economic shifts on the horizon and expect the impacts to be significant. But we also are optimistic about the prospect of enterprises keeping up with their cloud and storage requirements.
The evolution of the cloud has made it so that technology providers must diversify and that is key when it comes to the storage sector. The time of the pure storage vendors has passed. In the next year, these companies will likely be acquired, or transform into a provider of expanded services. This transition has been hastened due to how the management of storage continues to be an issue, as does hiring and maintaining skilled storage staff. Organizations are increasingly looking to adopt a storage as a service model, allowing them to focus on their core business and not the management of their data.
We see that alternative cloud storage providers will grow in market share thanks to the appeal of avoiding vendor lock-in, no egress fees, and multi-cloud connectivity. In the enterprise, cloud storage providers’ object storage offerings will continue to displace file storage for large-capacity applications for different use cases, traditionally seen as a large bucket for unstructured data.
Zadara is always keeping an eye on where the market is going and how best to meet customer’s evolving needs. Here are a few specific thoughts and predictions from our Solutions Architects and the CTO’s office:
- At the outset of this new year, even though we are seeing an overall decrease in venture capital and private equity, edge vendors will continue to see interest. It should come as no surprise that we feel the technology has continued to mature and presents a credible alternative to hyperscale clouds.
- But, first things first – we see that organizations need to clearly define where they play and how in the edge market and what they can offer. This is because, in the enterprise, there is confusion. We’re all talking about the shift to “cloud first”, what does that mean? Entering into an agreement with a hyperscale cloud provider? The reality is businesses need to look at what they need to function and grow, and not just follow industry trends.
- Building on that theme, organizations are waking up to the fact that a cloud first strategy does not just mean hyperscale deployments; clouds deployed closer to the operations on premises, in regional processing centers will become more and more necessary as the data needs from emerging technologies such as 5G, IoT will drive massive data movement. This means that localized access between compute, storage and the users or producers of the data becomes more essential to smooth operations, longer term storage will then move to aggregated repositories for longer term storage.
- We also predict for 2023, AI and analytics on data stored in object repositories will continue to gain traction as businesses increasingly look to maximize their data assets. IoT, smart cities, regional edge requirements and egress costs will force businesses to look at not just the costs of storing the data but accessing it too. This is where object storage at the edge becomes more and more prevalent.
- The containerization of applications will gather more and more momentum throughout 2023, helping to support simpler deployment from centralized control planes while supporting processing at the edge using containers controlled by Kubernetes.
The promise of 2023 includes uncertainty and a measure of trepidation, but it also promises to be one of forward momentum and increased change. We look forward to being here to service our partners and customers as the year unfolds.
