"Storage Wars" is a popular reality TV show, but the title may seem all too real to enterprises trying to deal with storage demands as they drown in data.
Software-Based Approaches
Disruptor #2: A shift from hardware-based (proprietary) approaches to software-based (using commodity hardware) approaches.
Traditional storage systems were tightly coupled to their proprietary underlying hardware, making storage systems expensive, complex, and requiring "fork lift" upgrades when replacing older, slower systems. Modern storage systems are software-only running on top of commodity x86 hardware. This reduces cost and greatly increases flexibility of deployment. Modern storage is designed to run on-premise, in the cloud, or some combination of both and does not rely on proprietary NVRAM, interconnects, or other hardware components.