The Data Center Storage Market

Data center storage is a segment of hardware and software that are used to house, monitor, and manage data storage, on-premises or in the cloud. 

Data center storage can be used for data access, processing, distributing, archiving, and backing up.

See below to learn more all about the global data center storage market:

See more: The Best Data Center Companies

Data center storage market

The data center market was valued at an estimated $187.35 billion in 2020. It’s projected to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5% from 2021 to 2030, reaching $517.17 billion by the end of it.

Regionally, the global data center market is segmented as follows:

• The U.S. market was estimated at $54.2 billion in 2020, with a market share of just under 30%
• The Chinese market is forecast for a CAGR of 16.7%, reaching $96.7 billion by 2027
• Japan and Canada are forecast to grow at a CAGR of 15.6% and 14.9% over the forecast period
• Within Europe, Germany is projected to maintain one of the highest CAGRs at 12.7%
• The Asia-Pacific segment, led by Australia, South Korea, and India, is projected to reach $67.6 billion by 2027

By industry, demand in the market is being driven by the health care, government, and banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sectors.

Other notable industries include the IT, telecommunications, energy, and utility industries.

Data center storage features

Data center storage is an essential part of any IT infrastructure and network. It comes in different types depending on the configuration, hardware, and network architecture.

Here are a few key types of storage methods used in server architectures:

Network-attached storage

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a dedicated storage device in a network that shares storage with multiple clients and clients to easily access and retrieve data.

Direct-attached storage

Direct-attached storage (DAS) is a storage device connected directly to a computer or server without needing to be connected through the main network. 

Storage area network

A storage area network (SAN) is a network of storage devices that creates a pool of shared storage for multiple computers and servers. 

The SAN design makes it scalable and boosts the data storage’s security. However, its complex architecture and implementation requirements can be costly and time-consuming.

Storage hardware and software

A big part of data centers storage is the variety of capabilities offered by the hardware and software options.

IDC predicts hard disk drive (HDD) storage technology to cover up to 54% of the industry needs in 2024. Additionally, tape storage and solid-state drive (SSD) storage are expected to reach 18% in 2024, up from 14% in 2018.

In terms of storage software, with software-defined (SD) data storage and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions, data centers are becoming easier to manage and more scalable.

“Rather like tape, HDD is here for the long haul. … Pressure is building on HDD makers to think in flash-friendly ways when designing higher-cap hard drives,” says Horizon Technology in a post.

“This ongoing convergence of form factors and interface protocols ultimately leads to standards that are device-agnostic. This, in turn, enables the greater application of software to the data center stack.”

See more: How Data Centers are Used by Bosch, PayPal, Groupon, Orange, and Suez: Case Studies

Benefits of data center storage

Adopting a data center storage solution can have numerous benefits, such as:

• Saving costs on storage
• Increasing network efficiency and performance
• Enabling access to storage
• Reducing storage downtime
• Promoting enterprise mobility through flexibility of design
• Simplifying backup and disaster recovery (DR)
• Reducing reliance on a single vendor

“While some enterprises chose to build and manage their own data centers, others chose to outsource their IT environment to third-party, multi-tenant colocation data centers to manage expenses. Those early centers provided the secure data center space, power, and connectivity (ping, power, and pipe) for companies to outsource their IT environment,” says Sean Baillie, a member of the Forbes Technology Council.

“As you’re looking for the right technologies and data centers, consider whether they can rapidly scale up or scale down space and power as required for your IT environment.”

Data center storage use cases

Here are a few examples that show how various organizations are using data center storage:

Evolution Systems

Evolution Systems is an IT firm and an IBM Business Partner. Based in Sydney, it specializes in cloud management and hosting services across the country.

Outgrowing its infrastructure, Evolution Systems had trouble supporting its private cloud offering without upgrading it.

Seeking help from its business partner, IBM, Evolution System chose to deploy IBM FlashSystem 7200 at its data center, using IBM’s Storage Utility offering for a capacity upgrade.

“We have been able to eliminate the time-consuming procurement cycle when adding new capacity for our private cloud clients,” says Geoff Boreland, managing director, Evolution Systems.

“One of our biggest clients had a single overnight job that used to take almost four hours. And with the new storage, it now takes about 35 minutes.”

Working with IBM, Evolution Systems was able to process workloads 80% faster, simplify its storage capacity planning, and introduce new storage in under six minutes instead of six weeks.

Acoustic

Acoustic is a marketing cloud for companies. Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, it helps customers by overtaking the repetitive tasks needed for marketing.

To meet increasing demand, Acoustic sought to modernize its stack infrastructure by moving it into the cloud. Working with AWS, it was able to access numerous managed services, including moving its servers and 12 data centers to the AWS Cloud.

“We had over 6,300 servers spread across 12 different data centers. Part of that was because when these companies were first acquired by our former parent company, their stacks weren’t integrated. We realized that we needed to modernize the stack, get efficiencies of scale, and have much better resiliency, all of which is possible on AWS,” says John Boezeman, CTO, Acoustic.

“We got rid of all the shared infrastructure services that we were running before, and we used AWS services to migrate the tools.”

Migrating its infrastructure to AWS Cloud, Acoustic was able to prepare for a holiday surge 70% faster, increase infrastructure reliability by 58%, and reduce data center costs by 20%.

PaceCloud

PaceCloud is a brand by the IT services company Royal Green to manage public cloud projects for customers. Based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, PaceCloud is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering that helps organizations limit the costs of building their infrastructures.

To keep up with the demand, PaceCloud looked to upgrade its infrastructure offering.

Seeking a backup-as-a-service (BaaS) solution, support for its apps, data, and virtual machine (VM) infrastructure, along with a multicloud environment that spans different regions, PaceCloud decided to work with Commvault and Cisco.

“By seamlessly integrating Commvault solutions with Cisco cloud products, we now have a highly flexible and interoperable infrastructure to underpin the delivery of our cloud services now and in the future,” says Chowdhury Qamrul Huda, CTO, PaceCloud.

“We invested heavily in data centers and technologies that would enable us to become a public cloud provider. We are using these cloud services to expand into new markets, including Southeast Asia and North America.”

With both Cisco and Commvault solutions, PaceCloud was able to make its infrastructure more flexible and scalable, ensure data availability across multicloud environments, boost its competitive advantage, and support future business growth.

Data center storage providers

Some of the leading providers of data center storage in the market include:

• Accenture
• AWS
• Fujitsu
• IBM
• Infosys
• HCL Technologies
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
• Microsoft
• Google Cloud
• Digital Realty

See more: The Edge Data Center Market