Network Storage

Fintech companies to explore data storage locations to meet sustainability goals

FINTECH Circle, in partnership with Bulk Data Centres, has released a report that found that companies’ growing concern about their environmental impact is a major factor in determining where to store their data.  In a survey of senior executives in the fintech and financial services sector, the report - The Data Usage Barometer - explores the broad trends taking place across fintech. It showed that finance increasingly relies on data and energy intensive technologies, with artificial intelligence expected to be the technology that will be most vital to future growth, followed by machine learning. Over a third of survey respondents had seen an increase of 50-100% in data usage and storage needs in the past three years, and more than a third of the survey respondents predicted growth of at least two times in the next three years, with half of that group expecting an increase of more than five times. Susanne Chishti, CEO of FINTECH Circle, says, “From embedded finance, digital assets including cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, and global payment solutions, fintech is disrupting and reshaping our lives. Central to this growth is where companies process their large volumes of data, and our survey shows that the majority of companies have explored or plan to explore alternatives to their current data storage infrastructure.” Half of the respondents said they are concerned about their company’s environmental impact and an even higher number agree that lowering their firm's carbon footprint is an ethical concern. Warren Barrie, Director of Bulk Data Centres, says, “Fintech has taken off in recent years and the sector is revolutionising our relationship with financial services. At its core, is the focus of ‘fintech for good’, which is based on the power of the sector to improve society and to be a custodian of sustainable products and services. “Companies are not just concerned about their shareholder returns but increasingly about their ethical and sustainable impact. This includes the upstream supply chain and where they store their data. We, at Bulk Data Centres, are committed to helping fintech companies by offering long-term sustainable solutions at much lower costs to European counterparts.” Some of the additional key findings include: • Two-thirds of respondents said AI will be vital to their future growth, with ML being the second most selected at 41%. • A third of survey respondents predicted growth of at least two times in the next three years, with half of that group expecting an increase of more than five times. • Data sovereignty and compliance are the top concerns over growing data usage and storage, selected by over half of respondents. • Security is the top requirement for data storage and processing, followed by reliability, ability to scale and then cost. 

Spectra Logic and iRODS Consortium partner over storage

Spectra Logic has announced a collaboration with the iRODS Consortium to create a joint solution built upon Spectra Vail software, Spectra BlackPearl S3 storage and the iRODS data management platform. The combined solution enables customers to use industry-standard cloud interfaces for on-premises disk and glacier storage with object tape, while unlocking multi-site/multi-cloud capabilities. The iRODS integration with BlackPearl S3 allows organisations to leverage the performance and cost benefits of on-premises glacier storage as disk or tape to access ‘cold’ data and automate workflows, while the integration with Vail provides access to cloud services across multiple clouds. Spectra Vail software and BlackPearl S3 storage have been tested with the iRODS S3 storage resource plugin to fully support the Amazon S3 abstraction that iRODS delivers. The new functionality is available as part of the iRODS 4.2.11 release. “Organisations that need an on-prem glacier tier will see many benefits with the interoperability between BlackPearl S3 and the iRODS data management platform,” says David Feller, Spectra Logic Vice President of Product Management and Solutions Engineering. “Organisations will be able to take full advantage of on-prem storage and the public, private and hybrid cloud by leveraging the Vail and iRODS integration.” “The combined Spectra Logic and iRODS solution will enable organisations that rely heavily on tape to archive petabytes of valuable digital data economically and efficiently in a glacier-like tier,” says Terrell Russell, Executive Director of the iRODS Consortium. “We look forward to a lasting collaboration with Spectra Logic that will help our mutual customers drive innovation and accelerate business results.”

Infinidat expands guarantee programme

Infinidat has announced an expansion of its guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) programme. Infinidat is making available the industry’s first cyber storage guarantee for recovery on primary storage - the InfiniSafe Cyber Storage guarantee. This ensures that enterprises and service providers recover and restore their data at near-instantaneous speed in the wake of a cyber attack by using a guaranteed immutable snapshot dataset with a guaranteed recovery time of one minute or less. The company is also announcing a new performance guarantee across its InfiniBox platforms. The new guarantees join Infinidat’s existing 100% availability guarantee, which was announced in 2019. “At our core, Infinidat consistently delivers unmatched enterprise SLAs and a differentiated customer experience that sets us apart and exemplifies our unconventional approach,” says Phil Bullinger, CEO, Infinidat. “With the introduction of our InfiniSafe Cyber Storage guarantee, our assured SLAs now span across availability, performance and recovery operations to meet the most demanding data centre requirements, demonstrating that our customers are always at the centre of what we do as a market leader.” Cyber resilient storage is among the most important and highly demanded requirements of enterprises today to ensure exceptional cyber security and combat cyber attacks across the entire storage estate and data infrastructure. In recent research, IDC found that 87% of organisations impacted by ransomware in the past year had to pay a ransom to recover their data. Infinidat helps organisations avoid having to pay the ransom, yet still retrieve their data, uncompromised and intact, through rapid cyber recovery. The company recently extended cyber resilience to its InfiniBox and InfiniBox SSA II enterprise storage platforms with the InfiniSafe Reference Architecture, allowing Infinidat to provide its immutability snapshot guarantee and the recovery time of immutable snapshots at one minute or less. Infinidat says that the InfiniBox and InfiniBox SSA II platforms for enterprise primary storage deployments are not only the most cyber resilient and reliable storage solutions in the industry, but also the highest performing. Given the powerful and consistent performance of the InfiniBox platforms, Infinidat is adding a performance guarantee. This performance guarantee assures customers that Infinidat’s primary storage platforms will outperform their existing storage products in their production environments. Infinidat works closely with customers to identify their specific needs for performance and analyse the requirements for each specific workload. Once the workload performance requirements are profiled, Infinidat will provide service level agreements aligned with the specific performance requirements profile and analysis of those workloads. The InfiniBox SSA II is said to provide lower latency than any other comparable enterprise storage platform in the industry, delivering an unprecedented 35 microseconds of latency. This enables customers to have optimal application and workload performance, as well as substantial storage consolidation driving increased efficiency and reduced total cost. From the earliest InfiniBox installations, Infinidat has earned an unprecedented reputation for product quality and reliability from an enterprise community that has zero tolerance for downtime. Every system is designed for zero downtime over the course of its lifecycle and comes with a 100% availability guarantee. All four of the Infinidat SLA guarantees are available across all of Infinidat’s consumption models: FLX (Infinidat’s storage-as-a-service offering), Elastic Pricing, and traditional purchase.

Infinidat’s InfiniBox SSA II receives award at the Flash Memory Summit 2022

Infinidat has announced that the InfiniBox SSA II has received a Best of Show Award at the Flash Memory Summit 2022. As the next generation solid state array in the company’s broad portfolio of enterprise storage and cyber resilient solutions, the InfiniBox SSA II was recognised as the Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation, demonstrating that the InfiniBox SSA II meets the stringent requirements of the hyperscaler, Cloud Service Provider (CSP), Managed Service Provider (MSP), and Managed Hosting Provider (MHP) customer base. The InfiniBox SSA II stands as the industry’s fastest all-flash storage array with unprecedented low latency and unmatched cyber resilience. “Winning the Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation Award at the Flash Memory Summit is another validation that Infinidat has taken the all-flash storage market by storm with our continual innovation,” says Eric Herzog, CMO at Infinidat. “For the most demanding applications and workloads, the InfiniBox SSA II is a state-of-the-art storage solution built from the ground up with the highest levels of enterprise-class performance, availability, and cyber resilience at scale, providing an ideal solution for hyperscale, CSP, MSP, and MHP deployments.” “Hyperscalers, CSPs, MSPs, and MHPs set the bar very high for service level objectives as they provide Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) for a fast-growing customer base which demands cyber resiliency and continuous access to the storage resources,” says Jay Kramer, Chairman of the Awards Program and President of Network Storage Advisors. “We are proud to recognise Infinidat for its InfiniBox SSA II, showcasing InfiniOps autonomous automation coupled with InfiniVerse AI operational set-it-and-forget-it simplicity. The solution not only exceeds its customer’s SLAs but also provides a 100% availability guarantee, unmatched real-world application performance, and powerful cyber storage resilience.” Launched in April 2022, the InfiniBox SSA II continues to raise the bar in enterprise storage performance, utilising 100% solid state technology for persistent storage, which, when coupled with Neural Cache and the company’s software advancements with autonomous automation, takes groundbreaking performance to the next level. The new InfiniBox SSA II delivers lower latency than any other comparable enterprise storage platform in the industry, delivering an unprecedented 35 microseconds of latency. In addition, the SSA II delivers the same 100% availability, white glove service, and lower total cost of ownership that defines the industry acclaimed InfiniBox customer experience. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise storage and cyber resilient solutions powered by a common software architecture across the business’ InfiniBox, InfiniBox SSA II and InfiniGuard platforms, including Infinidat’s cyber storage resiliency solution - InfiniSafe. The InfiniBox SSA II is available with Infinidat’s flexible consumption options, as are all of Infinidat’s solutions, including Storage-as-a-Service with Infinidat’s FLX program, capacity on demand with Infinidat’s Elastic Pricing model, and traditional purchase.

Time for a coffee? It’s time to discuss five key topics influencing enterprise storage

By Gareth Beanland, UK and Ireland Country Manager at Infinidat As we all head back to office life, even if just for a small proportion of the working week, old customs, like strategy conversations in the kitchen or over a cup of coffee, are returning. A lot has changed in the workplace and these topical chit-chats may seem like a quaint relic of a long forgotten, pre-COVID age, but they are as important as ever, if not more so. If you are thinking about long-term IT expenditures, cost of ownership reduction and what to do about enterprise storage in the next three to five years, here are five good conversation starters to get things going. Can enterprise storage help guard against cyber-attacks? Yes, and the key issue to discuss is consistency. Due to the cyber threats of ransomware and malware, it is imperative for enterprises to implement modern data protection and cyber resilience practices and capabilities across their primary and secondary storage estates. Features to be adding include immutable snapshots, logical air gapping, fenced forensic environments and virtually instantaneous recovery. Cyber criminals are targeting data backup as well as primary storage, so the secondary storage needs to be secure and robust enough to withstand attacks too. Remember, it is not a question of if you will suffer a cyber-attack, because cyber-attacks are pretty much a given these days, but when and how often. When you are considering enterprise storage technology to guard against a cyber-attack, look for solutions with purpose-built backup appliances for your secondary storage environments, to nullify ransomware and malware with automated functions. This will ensure business continuity and protect some of your company’s biggest strategic assets - data. It means that when a hacker declares they have taken your data ransom, you can go back to the immutable snapshots and simply ignore the cyber-criminal. There will be no need to pay any ‘ransom’, as you have a good copy of the data to recover. Can you detect when data storage is overly complex? Yes, and the key issue to discuss is storage consolidation. When enterprise storage becomes overly complex, your data ends up in silos and becomes costly to utilise and manage. This is a common nightmare and one that storage administrators too often tolerate. By consolidating your storage arrays, you not only reduce the number you have to manage, but also reduce the number of independent silos that require management, dramatically simplifying the entire data process. Can you tell if a storage solution provider can scale adequately? Yes, look at the company they keep. One of the easiest and best ways to vet the capabilities of an enterprise storage solution provider is to see if they count any Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) as customers. It shows robustness and technical resilience if CSPs and MSPs trust a storage vendor to this degree. If CSPs and MSPs are relying on the vendor’s storage platform for their own clients, then CIOs and IT decision-makers can be confident that their storage capabilities are top-notch and proven. It will mean that 90,000 back-ups per day are being run using that storage technology instead of only 30,000. As an additional check, look for storage providers who list CSPs, MSPs, and clients in highly regulated markets like banking, healthcare, and insurance. They will inevitably be giving their storage suppliers stringent SLA requirements and you can be confident they will meet them. How can we shift from managing infrastructure to focus on applications? There has been a shift within enterprise IT to focus on managing applications rather than managing the infrastructure. Many CIOs now talk about adopting a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ approach, which seems to be the preferred mode to reinforce this focus on applications. They want their storage systems to be automated and autonomous. To be able to benefit from the same level of comfort and avoid painful and extensive ‘performance tuning’, seek storage vendors offering intelligent, Neural Cache functionalities. This means the system can employ a form of machine learning, it will enable automated adjustments to ongoing changes in the application infrastructure and reflects a set-it-and-forget-it mentality. To go a stage further, look out for support for Red Hat’s Ansible Framework, which allows storage admins to let the DevOps and operations teams allocate and configure storage within the parameters they have established in Ansible, allowing those teams to work with enterprise storage platforms without causing any problems. Can we reduce CAPEX and OPEX by consolidating our storage? Yes. This is one of today’s biggest trends in enterprise storage, because companies are always looking to reduce expenditures and storage can be one of the most expensive pieces of their data centre infrastructure budgets.  This is particularly exacerbated in an era where data and storage growth is exponential. When a data centre uses vast sets of arrays, it means there is a need for more rack space, larger data centres, more power consumption, more cooling, and more daily operational management. This is all highly resource and cost intensive. By consolidating storage, both CAPEX and OPEX can be dramatically reduced. A set-it-and-forget-it ease of use approach to your storage environment also lowers operational manpower. There is no need for either RAID groups or LUNs and no requirement to ‘play’ with the storage to optimise application performance needs or to perform any other configuration. Technology has liberated us to remote working. As the COVID pandemic has proven, it does work, but there’s nothing like the spontaneous interactions that take place in an office environment for sparking new ideas, especially when it comes to enterprise IT strategy. Informal conversations over a cup of coffee are hugely valuable for sounding out advice and new ideas or discussing collaboration opportunities. Ultimately, it leads to better decision-making and increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Infinidat advances partner portal and expands channel sales with STaaS

Infinidat has announced new moves to advance its strong position in partnering, supporting and co-selling with channel partners, accelerating adoption of storage-as-a-service (STaaS), and significantly enhancing partner sales enablement. Infinidat will roll out a new global version of its partner portal in July, rebuilt from the ground up, to train and equip solution providers worldwide to grow their revenue at a faster pace and deliver their customers true business and technical value with Infinidat’s platforms. In addition, the company announced that it has integrated Infinidat’s STaaS solution into Arrow Electronics’ ArrowSphere in North America. “Our latest investments for our partners to have best-in-class tools and access to leading-edge ecosystems reflect our ongoing, strong commitment to our channel-centric model for go-to-market execution,” says Eric Herzog, CMO at Infinidat. “We’re streamlining and simplifying the partner experience to boost channel participation and success. We’re making it easier for solution providers to sell Infinidat’s industry acclaimed enterprise solution portfolio, including enhanced AIOps capabilities, industry-leading real world application performance with the lowest latency, and the rollout of our innovative InfiniSafe technology across our platforms for groundbreaking levels of cyber resilience, all with the choice of flexible consumption models.” Partner portal gets a makeover Infinidat has rebuilt its partner portal to deliver an enhanced experience for the channel. It is designed to catapult partners forward with dynamic and relevant information to enable competitive advantages. The new portal features the following: Easier navigation to simplify use of the knowledgebase and enablement tools in the portal in support of new and expanding market opportunities.Refreshed, modernised, and expanded content, including detailed information about the new InfiniSafe technology on InfiniBox and InfiniGuard. In addition, localised content in different languages for its global partner ecosystem.Streamlined training experience to make partners more technically adept to sell Infinidat’s portfolio for mutual benefits. Accreditation, also, continues to be part of the program. “We have been a strong partner of Infinidat for several years, and their partner support, programs, and portal have been top-notch,” says Jan Veith, Sales Director, Hansen & Gieraths IT Solutions GmbH. “We are very excited about the new, streamlined Infinidat partner portal and how it will help us grow our business, deliver better solutions leveraging Infinidat’s award-winning platforms, and keep our teams up-to-date on all things Infinidat.” Infinidat has worked with third-party vendors to bring state-of-the-art capabilities into its new portal for channel partners. One of them is Highspot, the sales enablement platform that increases the performance of sales teams by bridging the gap between strategy and execution. “We’re proud that Infinidat has chosen Highspot's sales enablement platform to deliver the right resources to their channel partners at the right time within their new partner portal,” says Gwen Sheridan, Vice President of Customer Services, Highspot. “With Highspot, Infinidat’s partners can utilise rich content, guidance and insights to effectively engage buyers and improve sales performance.” Infinidat’s STaaS solution integrates into ArrowSphere in North America  Arrow’s ArrowSphere platform helps channel partners manage, differentiate, and scale their cloud business. Its marketplace includes leading hyperscale providers, as well as public and private IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, HaaS and cloud software offerings, such as Infinidat’s STaaS. “Infinidat is creating more value for its partners by leveraging ArrowSphere to more easily deliver to customers Infinidat’s storage-as-a-service offering,” comments Shannon McWilliams, Vice President of Supplier Alliances, Arrow. “Storage-as-a-service is a significant revenue growth opportunity for channel partners. Providing a new option for integration, automation, and streamlined ordering of enterprise storage, Infinidat’s STaaS now joins the increasing list of solutions available ‘as a service’ through Arrow’s award-winning cloud management platform, ArrowSphere.”

Telehouse and Zayo team up to future-proof network infrastructure

Telehouse has announced a collaboration with Zayo to deliver a high-capacity and agile network across Europe. Driven by the growing demand for fast connectivity and hybrid IT infrastructure, the collaboration will connect Telehouse’s network of European data centres on Zayo’s high-performance fibre network to create a unique connected digital ecosystem and enable customers to benefit from fast, seamless access to multiple cloud providers. Zayo will deliver a robust cross-connect infrastructure across Telehouse’s iconic London Docklands campus, providing enhanced and resilient connectivity to customers globally. The company will also help Telehouse connect Telehouse South – its newest data centre set to open in February 2022 - into the Docklands campus, enabling customers to benefit from the same low latency and highly-connected ecosystem of more than 800 connectivity partners for which the campus is known. As a long-time partner of Telehouse, Zayo already has core network nodes in place within seven of Telehouse’s ten European sites, with the remainder to be added in 2022. Through the new partnership agreement, Telehouse customers can benefit from up to 100Gbps bandwidth across European sites, while Zayo customers can tap into the Telehouse ecosystem to benefit from stronger connections and unrivalled access to multiple cloud and connectivity providers. “Our goal at Telehouse is not to sell real estate but to build connected ecosystems and increase connectivity for customers looking to connect across sites or to the cloud,” says Nick Layzell, Client Services Director at Telehouse Europe. “By combining our secure, connected ecosystem with Zayo’s innovative fibre solutions, we are not only providing customers with a trusted environment to host their infrastructure, but a reliable, scalable and high-capacity network to meet evolving business demands.” With this partnership, Zayo is expanding its network to cater to growing connectivity demands driven by the shift to hybrid work. By establishing core network nodes and placing equipment within Telehouse’s strategically located data centres, Zayo will strengthen its high-speed global fibre network, while also enhancing its mission-critical fibre bandwidth capability within the Telehouse data centre facilities. “Telehouse was an obvious choice for us due to its established reputation for building highly-secure and connected data centre ecosystems and close proximity to Europe’s growing financial ecosystem,” says Ed Wheeler, Data Centre Partner Manager at Europe Zayo. “Together we can meet  increased customer demand for connectivity to support hybrid working and facilitate crucial connections for Zayo clients, including large global banks and hyperscalers.”

Highly Reliable INA3600 1U Rackmount Network Appliance

IBASE Technology has introduced its new INA3600, a highly reliable 1U rackmount network appliance, designed to handle complex and demanding networking tasks for both large and growing businesses. It delivers powerful networking performance optimized for high-density deployments in applications such as network security, SDN, NFV, SD-WAN, data management and analytics. The INA3600 high performance 1U-sized appliances are powered by 10th Gen Intel Core and Xeon W processors (codenamed Comet Lake) and supports up to 14 Gigabit Ethernet ports with IBASE proprietary network interface cards. To meet your network deployment and expansion requirements, the flexible INA3600 comes with six GbE ports and in two variants. The INA3600W model supports an Intel W480E chipset, up to 14 LAN ports and a PCI-Ex16 expansion slot, while the INA3600H has an Intel H420E chipset and the option to have a maximum of 10 LAN ports. The INA3600 supports two DDR4 memory slots for a total capacity of 64GB. Depending on SKU, it integrates three 2.5in drive bays for high-speed storage and a liquid crystal display module (LCM). A 300W power supply, LAN bypass function (LAN3/4 & 5/6), TPM 2.0 hardware-based security and two USB 3.0 ports are standards. INA3600 Features: 10th Gen Intel Xeon W / Core i9/i7/i5/i3 / Pentium Gold / Celeron processor with W480E or H420E PCH (CML-S)2x DDR4 UDIMMs, Max. 64GB (ECC/ Non-ECC)6x RJ45 GbE on boardOptional NIC slot1x PCI-E x8 Expansion slot300W power supply

Lenovo launches storage solution to help businesses embrace technology

Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group has unveiled its new range of All Flash Array (AFA) storage area network (SAN) offerings to help businesses today while better equipping them for their digital transformation journey needs of tomorrow.  The new hybrid cloud solution is Lenovo’s latest offering in their data management portfolio, as Lenovo continues to build momentum as the fastest growing all flash storage vendor globally.  The new storage solutions, DM5100F SAN and DM5000F SAN, bring best in-class data management down to a starting price of under $15k. They include comprehensive features such as integrated cloud connectivity, storage efficiency, encryption, built-in data protection, security, and consistent performance, while offering a reliable and secure base for businesses to build their IT infrastructure around.  Lenovo’s ThinkSystem DM5100F SAN and DM5000F SAN are the first to market with complete upgrade paths from block only to Unified (block, file and object) storage. Powered by ONTAP data management software, these latest solutions have upgradeable software packages to suit the needs of organisations today and as they grow in the future.  Key capabilities of these devices include:  Performance: Consistent low-latency controls via adaptive Quality of Service (QoS) and service level provisioning to also cater for additional workloads like AI and Data Analytics Cloud integration: Industry-leading solutions for backup, Disaster Recovery (DR), automated data tiering and burst workload management ThinkSystem Intelligent Monitoring: Predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms to uncover risk factors and opportunities to improve system health, availability, and security  Data protection: Built-in, easy-to-use backup/restore and DR, integrated with third party software including Veeam and Commvault SnapMirror Business Continuity: Non-disruptive failover active-active cross site clusters, ensuring data continuity  System availability: Six 9s or better system availability, including for planned activities and unplanned events Security: Regulatory compliance and protection against unauthorised data access including in-flight and at-rest encryption  Marco Pozzoni, Director, EMEA Storage Sales, Lenovo ISG says, “Our company mission to provide smarter technology for all is directly reflected in these new solutions. Traditional storage solution packages come with all capabilities built-in, raising the costs and making storage expensive for all businesses. We’ve decided to address this issue and offer solutions that help companies, irrespectively of the growth stage they are at. The DM5100F SAN and DM5000F SAN are both fully upgradeable from a hardware and software perspective, giving businesses a richer data management platform that grows as they do.  “With flexible working arrangements looking to be a more permanent factor in our lives, businesses need to be able to ensure that mission critical functions remain online in both a secure and effective way. Our tests have achieved efficiency rates of up to 20:1 when running virtual machines, and up to 3:1 in other more data intensive environments. These ratings dramatically lower the total cost of ownership of data storage, which combined with our flexible software and hardware packages provides businesses with an industry leading solution that meets their needs now and in the future.”   This launch also highlights Lenovo’s ongoing commitment to its channel partners. Lenovo is giving its Lenovo Data Champions, an exclusive community for Lenovo brand lovers and tech fans, including 10 channel partners, help, pricing support and access to these innovative data management solutions.  

90% of IT decision makers say flash-based object storage will replace primary storage

Scality has announced the results of an independent survey completed by IT decision makers across the UK, France and Germany. It revealed a fundamental shift in the industry towards flash-based object storage to fuel artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), automation, and big data analytics in place of other forms of primary storage. All-flash object storage provides comprehensive data protection of and rapid access to massive volumes of unstructured data, powering the heavy workloads of these digital business initiatives. The survey indicates that Europe is mature for this change, with 90% of respondents across all three countries stating that this move to all-flash object storage will occur within five years. Notably, France seems most convinced that this digital transformation will happen in under three years (76%), followed by Germany (72%) and the UK (43%). “As flash becomes available at higher densities and lower costs, it is now suitable for high-capacity data storage,” explains Paul Speciale, chief product officer at Scality. “Object storage has begun to embrace flash media and, as the cost of flash decreases, it is likely to become the default media for object storage and will effectively make object storage the new primary storage for a much broader range of applications.” Not only does all-flash object storage provide extremely high performance, thereby accelerating AI/ML environments, empowering business intelligence/analytics, and increasing infrastructure performance and utilisation, it also lowers TCO and improves application development. In the survey conducted by Vanson Bourne, IT decision makers across various industries including financial services, telecom, professional services, manufacturing, and retail, were asked: “Do you think flash-based object storage will dominate storage platforms to fuel artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), automation, and big data analytics, in place of other forms of primary storage?” Key findings in the UK include: The vast majority of UK respondents (77%) said this move to flash-based object storage will happen in the mid-term (one to five years), while respondents in France (76%) and Germany (72%) leant towards the short term (under three years). 3% of respondents said that it would occur within a year, 40% between one and three years, 37% between three and five years, and 1% beyond five years. 9% said it will not happen and 10% didn’t know. In the UK, participants from the IT, technology and telecom, (9%) and the retail, distribution and transport (5%) sectors were the only to state that this digital transformation will occur within one year.UK respondents in the business and professional services sector were most likely to state that the move to flash-based object storage will occur between three and five years, at 71% compared to an average across all UK respondents of 37%.UK respondents from smaller organisations (1,000 - 2,999 employees) were more likely to state that this transformation will occur within five years compared to larger organisations (3,000+ employees), at 92% to 76% respectively. Smaller organisations were also more likely to say all-flash object storage will dominate in the short to mid-term (8% under one year, 50% one to three years, 33% three to five years and 0% over five years). In contrast, larger organisations leaned more evenly towards the mid-term (1% under one year, 37% one to three years, 38% three to five years, and 1% over five years). These European results are in line with research carried out by ESG in the US earlier in the year, which found that 77% of IT professionals at organisations currently using all-flash object storage said the technology has had a high impact or has been a game-changing technology in their on-premises storage environment