2018 Brings Once-in-a-Generation Shift in Data Storage - Direct2DellEMC

I have to be honest. Much of what I predict to be significant for the data storage industry in 2018 may go unnoticed by most IT professionals, even though some of these concern major progress that hasn't been experienced in nearly a full generation! So much has been happening in the development of exciting new storage-class memory (SCM) that will help make arrays faster and more efficient in processing general purpose workloads, and this year I believe we'll see a tangible payoff with the mainstreaming of this technology. This big news is all about Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) and the emergence of this highly anticipated interface within commercial storage arrays. With Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning seemingly all the rage in IT these days, I expect to see emerging and increasingly practical use cases coming to commercial storage offerings that attempt to further automate storage management, taking concepts such as intelligent data placement and performance tuning to the next level.