Hitachi Vantara expands in hybrid and multi-cloud storage
As enterprises increasingly need cross-cloud consistency, hybrid capabilities and on-premises technology, storage vendors like Hitachi Vantara are trying to rise to the occasion.
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Published: 29 Jul 2024
Hitachi Vantara has made a major shift in its storage strategy, focusing on a software-defined storage platform called the Virtual Storage Platform One. The VSP One aims to deliver a single software-defined storage architecture that offers a common data plane across block, file and object storage protocols and spans both hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
The VSP One announcement in late 2023 was and is indicative of a larger trend in enterprise data storage: Nearly every business uses a data environment that spans multiple data centers as well as multiple public cloud providers. Storage technology must address the complexities of those hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
3 top trends in hybrid and multi-cloud
As the maturity of distributed data environments has increased over the past couple of years, enterprises have experienced three key shifts regarding data storage priorities:
A need for cross-cloud consistency. The first shift is an increased focus on consistency of storage technology, capabilities and experience across on-premises, off-premises and cloud environments. As data demands continue to skyrocket, especially with the expected levels of investment allocated to AI projects, managing disparate storage environments has become far too costly and has limited organizations' business agility.
Sixty-eight percent of organizations agreed that the overall complexity of their data storage environment is slowing IT operations and initiatives, according to a February 2024 research report by TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group. Disparate infrastructure experiences slow operations and lengthen time to value. To remedy these challenges, businesses are prioritizing consistency across all environments.
Increased adoption of hybrid cloud and traditionally on-premises storage technologies within public cloud services. As organizations expand their storage investments within the major public cloud providers, they increasingly use storage technologies from providers other than the hosting cloud provider. For example, they use Hitachi Vantara VSP One on AWS.
Ninety-six percent of organizations reported using a hybrid cloud or traditionally on-premises storage technology on public cloud services, according to the Enterprise Strategy Group research report. Some of the top drivers of this adoption include superior price and performance, better functionality and better total cost of ownership.
Increased preference for on-premises storage technology. Over the years, Enterprise Strategy Group has asked organizations to compare on-premises storage technology with public cloud storage technology across a variety of factors, such as availability, total cost of ownership and security of sensitive data.
In previous years, public cloud storage held the perception advantage over on-premises storage. This year, the results shifted, with on-premises storage outperforming public cloud storage across each metric. The takeaway is that cloud storage adoption is not a zero-sum game. On-premises storage platforms will continue to play a key role in enterprise storage environments moving forward.
In other words, organizations need consistency across their hybrid and multi-cloud storage environments. They often work with hybrid cloud or traditionally on-premises storage companies, such as Dell Technologies, Hitachi Vantara, HPE, NetApp and Pure Storage to achieve this cross-location consistency.
However, a consistent storage experience, while becoming essential, is not sufficient for success. As a result, storage vendors must continue to innovate to not only improve the storage experience associated with a specific deployment location, but also to improve that experience across locations, both on and off premises, and across clouds -- including the movement of apps and data across those environments.
Hitachi seeks to meet increasing hybrid, multi-cloud needs
Recently, I got some in-person time with the Hitachi Vantara team to better understand its vision of VSP One moving forward. According to Hitachi Vantara, VSP One will be able to serve as a hybrid and multi-cloud data platform, and it will support multiple storage protocols across multiple locations, on and off premises.
Storage vendors must continue to innovate to not only improve the storage experience associated with a specific deployment location, but also to improve that experience across locations, both on and off premises, and across clouds.
Hitachi Vantara already offers multiple additional enhancements to reduce risks to the environment and simplify the management of large fleets of systems. To this end, Hitachi Vantara includes a 100% data availability guarantee along with an effective capacity guarantee to reduce upfront planning efforts and risk.
Hitachi Vantara is also making significant investments in its Hitachi Ops Center AIOps and automation capabilities. These investments are designed to simplify management, better analyze the performance of the environment to improve optimization across the entire hybrid and multi-cloud environment, and expand data protection and infrastructure observability capabilities.
The bottom line is that as data storage platforms continue to scale while remaining distributed across environments, the industry is going to require real investment in the following areas:
Building consistency.
Simplifying and automating operations.
Obtaining tools to rapidly perform root cause analysis of application issues.
Optimizing the entire environment.
While Hitachi Vantara is not alone in pursuing this direction, the company has already made meaningful strides to expand its storage technology beyond delivering systems -- transforming into the hybrid and multi-cloud data storage platform organizations increasingly require.
Scott Sinclair is practice director with TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, covering the storage industry.
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.
