The market is moving toward SDS

SDS is the future, and this is where the storage industry is moving. In fact, it is predicted that, in the next few years, approximately 70% of all current storage arrays will be available as software-only solutions or virtual storage appliances (VSAs). Traditional network-attached storage (NAS) solutions are 30% more expensive than current SDS implementations, and mid-range disk arrays are even more costly. Taking all this into account alongside the fact that data consumption is growing approximately 40% in enterprise every year, with a cost decline of only 25%, you can see why we are moving toward an SDS world in the near future.

With the number of applications that are running public, private, and hybrid clouds, consumer and business data consumption is growing exponentially and ceaselessly. This data is usually mission-critical and requires a high level of resiliency. The following is a list of some of these applications:

• E-commerce and online storefronts
• Financial applications
• Enterprise resource planning
• Health care
• Big data
• Customer relationship management

When companies store this type of data (called bulk data), they not only need to archive it, but they also need to access it, and with the lowest latency possible. Imagine a scenario where you are sent to take X-rays during your doctor's appointment, and when you arrive, they tell you that you have to wait for a week to get your scans because they have no storage space available to save your images. Naturally, this scenario will not happen because every hospital has a highly efficient procurement process, where they can predict usage based on their storage consumption and decide when to start the purchase and installation of new hardware—but you get the idea. It is much faster and more efficient to install a POSIX-standard server into your SDS layer and be ready to go.