Virtualization Will Keep Driving Storage Market in 2013: 10 Reasons Why

The just-ended 2012 was clearly a year of innovation for the storage industry. Companies in the sector had to innovate because of increased growth in enterprise and personal data, larger application workloads and demand for greater performance. This growth put greater pressure on storage platforms to work fast and efficiently. NAND flash, automated tiering software and advanced networking capabilities have helped enterprises handle the ever-larger storage volumes. Although these advancements have played a pivotal role in the revitalization of the storage industry, the biggest factor for the changing face of storage is virtualization. IDC predicts that in 2013, 69 percent of workloads will be virtualized. The wide adoption of virtualization and the transition to the software-defined data center are creating a new order in the storage business. How will this continue to evolve in 2013 and beyond? To find out, eWEEK worked with Ed Lee, architect for new-gen storage provider Tintri, who shared 10 insights on trends to watch for in 2013. Prior to Tintri, Lee was the principal systems architect at data domain (now owned by EMC) and was an original member of the Berkeley RAID team.