ATTO Technology, a global leader of network, storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments for over 30 years, has announced the findings of an independent survey of IT decision makers across the UK and Germany. According to the survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne, organisations adopting enterprise NVMe storage currently face two main challenges: scalability and cost. In addition, the respondents indicated that they still need NVMe to offer greater flexibility, manageability and affordability.
The above limitations notwithstanding, NVMe has opened up new opportunities for data-hungry and business-critical applications that demand low-latency, high-performance enterprise storage connectivity. This is thanks partly to NVMe’s ability to reach significantly higher performance levels than alternatives such as SAS via a lighter command set and switched transport architecture. However, this also introduces a downside when it comes to scalability, cost, reliability, serviceability, management and environmental awareness.
Across both countries, 31% of respondents stated that scaling NVMe into larger data pools was a challenge and that they were looking for greater flexibility and better management tools. 27% indicated that the cost of NVMe storage poses a challenge that makes it difficult to justify the investment. In addition, 20% of the responses revealed that NVMe showed weaknesses in other parts of the storage infrastructure. Only 12% of the cases in the poll had not experienced any challenges when adopting NVMe storage.
Tim Klein, ATTO’s Co-founder, President and CEO, said: “While NVMe provides undeniable performance benefits for data-driven organisations, there is still some work to do. Teething problems occur with any new technology and end-users are still looking for NVMe solutions that will meet their speed requirements without compromising on scalability, manageability and affordability.”
In the survey, IT decision makers across a range of industries including professional services, telecom, financial, manufacturing and retail, were asked: “Which of the following challenges have you or your organisation experienced in adopting NVMe storage solutions?”
Key findings in the UK include:
• 23% of respondents indicated that the cost of NVMe is a challenge, saying that they are struggling to justify the investment. Decision makers in the IT/technology/telecoms industries were most likely to report cost as a major challenge, at 40% compared the average across the UK of 23%.
• 21% reported that scaling NVMe into larger data pools is a key challenge and stated that they are looking for more flexibility and better management tools.
• UK respondents from the manufacturing and the financial services industries were most likely to report that NVMe revealed weaknesses in other parts of their storage infrastructures, at 23% and 20% respectively, compared to a UK average of 13%.
• When it comes to pain-free adoption of NVMe storage, UK IT decision makers in the business and professional services sector were most likely to state that they did not experience any challenges in adopting NVMe storage, at 50% compared to an average of 11% across the country.
