By: Linda
The data center industry is always evolving, with new trends emerging on what seems like a daily basis. And this year was no different. As our data center clients prepare for another year of evolution in the industry, they shared with us a few predictions of trends that will pop up in 2016, such as increased mergers and acquisitions and the emergence of a few new technologies. These include:
- More merger and acquisition activity and company splits: If Dell’s acquisition of EMC taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected. According to our data center clients, this won’t be the last surprise merger; there will be more convergence of data center companies in the next year. Our clients also predict that tech giants’ M&A activity will overshadow any other major product or partnership initiatives in the next year. Along these lines, companies will be looking to divest and off-shore some parts of their businesses that aren’t performing well financially, so there will be continued divestiture.
- Increased convergence: The data center market is moving beyond legacy infrastructure and is losing interest in outdated technology. Thus, we will see a continued consolidation as the market makes this move.
- Major reinvestment in big data tools: Most IT professionals stick with what’s tried and true, so it makes sense they are comfortable investing in traditional solutions. However, they also need to get more out of their budgets. They have so much data with no way to manage it, which means they can’t reap the benefits of insights available in that big data. This will lead to a major reinvestment in new solutions, such as data management and analysis tools for big data, to solve these problems in 2016.
- Use of flash to complement traditional storage: While flash storage is costing trillions of dollars in capacity requirements, hard drives are enforcing the case for a separation of storage performance from capacity. Hard drives are here to stay and dominate storage from a capacity perspective. However, in addition to these trends is the changing perspective of flash in today’s market, and its new role as a complement to traditional storage arrays. This setup will ensure increased performance and capacity at a lower cost than just using flash storage. Instead of just being the sole source of storage, flash storage will increase in 2016 as a supplement to traditional storage.
Is there anything you’re predicting for the data center industry in 2016? Tweet us at @MetisComm.