Data fuels business growth by helping companies understand customer preferences, grow sales, identify new business opportunities, increase innovation and improve efficiency. However, data sprawl and storage complexity make it difficult to extract insights from rapidly growing data volumes.
Companies today commonly have data stored in dozens of different locations across multiple data centers, branch offices, cloud repositories, edge servers and endpoint devices. More than 40 percent of companies report they aren’t even sure where all of their critical data is located, according to a recent Barclays study.
Those factors make it extremely difficult to analyze and use data effectively. In a recent ESG survey of IT decision-makers, 95 percent said better data utilization is among their top business priorities, yet 93 percent said data storage and management complexity is impeding their efforts. Additionally, 67 percent said fragmented data storage across hybrid environments is increasing their business risk.
Such challenges are driving steady adoption of storage virtualization solutions that make it easier to find, use and manage data storage. The storage virtualization market, currently valued at $13.5 billion, is projected to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 26.6 percent through 2026, reaching a value of $32.5 billion.
Storage virtualization unites multiple physical storage devices and makes them appear as a single pool of storage capacity. The storage pool can then be managed from a single pane of glass, thus simplifying storage management and access — particularly for organizations with data spread across different clouds and geographic regions. This allows users and applications to access the data they need quickly, regardless of its physical location.
Virtualization uses software to create an abstraction layer separating storage management from the underlying hardware, enabling greater flexibility and scalability. The software identifies and aggregates storage capacity, making it available to operating systems and applications. The software layer also enables a variety of important storage management functions, including automated tiering, caching and replication.
Other important benefits of virtualized storage include: