GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating Primary Storage Solutionsv5.0

1. Executive Summary

Primary storage has evolved significantly beyond its traditional role of structured data management. Today’s solutions must address a complex array of enterprise requirements that span on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. While continuing to provide the persistent block storage that serves as the foundation for mission-critical applications and databases, modern primary storage systems are increasingly called upon to support emerging workloads like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Organizations across industries depend on primary storage to support their most critical business operations, from processing financial transactions to powering customer-facing applications. As the technology has matured, solutions now offer sophisticated data services, automation capabilities, and integration features that extend far beyond basic storage functions.

The modern storage infrastructure landscape presents several key imperatives for organizations. They must support an increasingly diverse mix of workloads while meeting stringent environmental sustainability targets. Data mobility across different environments needs to be seamless, even as organizations strengthen their defenses against ransomware and other cybersecurity threats. All of this must be accomplished while maintaining cost efficiency in the face of relentless data growth and simplifying operations through increased automation.

Business Imperative
For CxOs, primary storage represents both a critical operational requirement and a strategic investment. Modern solutions must deliver beyond traditional metrics of performance and capacity to support key business initiatives. Organizations now demand storage solutions that can accelerate digital transformation efforts while meeting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals through improved efficiency. These systems must enable AI/ML and analytics initiatives while ensuring business continuity and cyber resilience. Additionally, they need to optimize infrastructure costs and provide robust support for hybrid and multicloud strategies.

The stakes are high, as primary storage decisions can significantly impact an organization’s ability to innovate, compete, and operate efficiently in today’s data-driven business environment. Organizations must carefully evaluate solutions that meet their current needs and provide the flexibility and capabilities to support future growth and emerging technologies.

Sector Adoption Score
To help executives and decision-makers assess the potential impact and value of deploying a primary storage solution, this GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a structured assessment of the sector across five factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters adoption of a primary storage solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that a primary storage solution is a credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.

The factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for primary storage are explained in more detail in the Sector Brief section that follows.

Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for Primary Storage

This is the fifth year that GigaOm has reported on the primary 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 Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective primary storage solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading primary storage offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.