GigaOm Radar for Scale-Out Storagev5.0

1. Executive Summary

In today’s data-driven landscape, organizations face an unprecedented surge in volumes of unstructured data. From scientific research to financial transactions, this data explosion demands robust, flexible storage solutions. Scale-out storage has emerged as a critical technology for addressing these challenges, offering a compelling combination of scalability, performance, and adaptability.

What, Why, and Who

Scale-out storage allows organizations to expand their storage infrastructure seamlessly by adding nodes, increasing both capacity and performance as needed. This approach is crucial for several reasons:

• Data growth: It accommodates the exponential growth of unstructured data without compromising accessibility or performance.
• Flexibility: It supports a wide range of workloads, from high-performance computing to cloud-native applications.
• Efficiency: It enables better resource utilization and simplifies management compared to traditional scale-up architectures.

This technology is particularly vital for industries dealing with massive data volumes, including healthcare, media and entertainment, financial services, and research institutions. However, its relevance extends to any organization seeking to future-proof its data infrastructure.

Business Imperative

For C-level executives, scale-out storage represents more than a technical solution; it’s a strategic asset. In an era when data is a key differentiator, the ability to store, access, and analyze vast amounts of information efficiently can significantly impact an organization’s competitiveness and innovation capacity.

Adopting scale-out storage solutions can lead to:

• Improved operational efficiency through simplified management and reduced infrastructure complexity.
• Enhanced agility in responding to changing data needs and business requirements.
• Better support for data-intensive applications and analytics, driving innovation and insight.
• Reduced total cost of ownership over time, especially for organizations with rapidly growing data volumes.

As data continues to grow in volume and importance, the choice of storage infrastructure becomes increasingly critical. Scale-out storage provides the foundation upon which organizations can not only manage their current data challenges but also leverage future opportunities in data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

Given the evolving nature of data management challenges and the continuous advancements in storage technologies, organizations should regularly reassess their storage strategies to ensure they remain aligned with business objectives and technological capabilities.

This is our fifth year evaluating the scale-out storage space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines 19 of the top scale-out storage solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading scale-out storage offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.