Death by 1,000 cuts: Mainstream storage array suppliers are bleeding

Cloud, all-flash kit, object storage slicing away at titans of storage

Peak array passing

These mainstream supplier storage results indicate a slowdown. That has been and could be attributed to a recent recession and an enterprise storage spending freeze, but startups in converged systems, virtual SANs, all-flash and hybrid arrays, etc, have grown their revenues over this period, many of them dramatically, with three-digit percentage growth numbers.

What enterprise spending freeze and recession has affected them? None. Their customers chose to buy new storage gear instead of the same old, same old mainstream storage vendors' gear. Why was that?

They offered better value storage than the mainstream array vendors.

Now legacy storage array marketeers are fighting on too many fronts as they try to optimise the positioning of their products to grow revenues, or even just to maintain them.

What is going to happen? As lemmings near a cliff their comments change in content from "No problem" through "We're fixing this" to "Er, Houston we have a problem," to "Our new CEO will ..."

Are we approaching a tipping point in the fortunes of mainstream storage arrays?

Are there now so many better alternatives for so many data storage use cases that legacy array sales will start tanking and mainstream storage vendors' array product strategies start unravelling, prompting a new wave of frantic technology catch-up acquisitions?

El Reg's storage desk thinks that we could be at that point – where peak array has passed and decline lies ahead.

It won't be the death of the mainstream storage array but we may be looking at a period of no growth and possible/probable decline as the upstarts slash their thousand cuts in the body of the storage array beast and it bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds ... ®