Storage market trends of 2017: Flash, HCI and cloud gain steam

Disruption in the enterprise storage market appears unlikely to subside anytime soon. AI analytics, cloud, HCI, mergers and NVMe flash highlight key themes heading into 2018. Obvious statement alert: Enterprise storage market trends point to challenging times ahead for vendors. Rack-scale flash, hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid cloud have emerged as legitimate alternatives to the traditional ways of buying, deploying and managing storage. Placed on a bell curve, the rise of these maturing storage options would intersect with a steady drop in the use of disk-based external storage systems. Even as the enterprise storage market trends away from traditional networked storage, industry-shaping mergers are shaking things up. The demise of storage hardware may be greatly exaggerated, but software-defined storage is closing the gap. Despite all these changes, launching a successful storage startup is tougher than ever, with venture capital becoming increasingly scarce. Here is a look back at some of the major developments in enterprise storage during 2017, and what lies ahead in 2018. Dell EMC capped off its first year as a merged company trying to figure out how to reverse its slumping legacy storage, particularly its midrange systems. Mirroring changes felt across the industry, Dell EMC generated less revenue year over year from networked storage, helping No. 2 NetApp gain ground on its longtime rival.