The year was 2015 when a few of us from different companies in the storage industry came together to discuss collaborating on a software project. It was a small but significant moment for an industry notorious for being highly proprietary.

The Linux Foundation OpenSDS project was launched as a result of that discussion, with the mission to address storage integration challenges. With increased interest, the OpenSDS project expanded into the SODA Foundation last year to better meet the needs of a growing and more diverse community. SODA Foundation’s goals were many, including building solutions for end users, data management standardization, cross-project integration, technology roadmapping, and gaining deeper insight into the industry as a whole. 

To accomplish these goals, we needed a comprehensive study of the current data and storage landscape, and the role of open source in it. In addition to covering existing and emerging data and storage technologies, we also wanted this study to reflect how they are applied in the data center, the cloud, and the edge. This report is the culmination of the 2021 Data and Storage Trends Survey conducted in partnership with the Linux Foundation Research team. We also invited the following communities to be our survey partners, expanding reach across different domains, platforms, industries and regions. These partners included Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Storage Networking Industry Association, Open Infrastructure Foundation, Storage Performance Council, Japan Data Storage Forum, China Open Source Cloud League, and Mulan Open Source Community.

The report reveals the top data and storage challenges faced by users, storage use trends (tape is not dead!), vendor product strategies, cloud storage use cases, and the important priorities for enterprises in the next 3 years, and beyond.  

Some findings in this report such as the rise of cloud native, and the ubiquity of software-defined storage, are in line with general trends.

An interesting but not unusual finding is how the majority of vendors are now prioritizing open source. Traditionally, every vendor builds its ecosystem to achieve maximum lock-in. The business rationale behind that is understandable, and at times necessary for security, interoperability, and other objectives. The proliferation of open source technologies such as Kubernetes tests the limits of proprietary ecosystems, forcing vendors to rethink and embrace open source as a business strategy. That does not necessarily mean vendors are opening their tightly guarded ecosystems. Instead, it means that they typically engage open source as a means to extend their ecosystems. Regardless, more vendor involvement in open source ultimately benefits end users.

This brings us to how and where SODA brings value to vendor and end user organizations. This report validated the focus areas and direction of the Foundation. At the same time, it shows there is much work to be done, and many opportunities for improvement along the way. We hope it will help guide business and technology leaders in their decision making and strategic approaches.

Finally, I would like to thank the LF Research team for assisting in this crucial research, our survey partners and everyone that participated in the survey.

Steven Tan
Chair, SODA Foundation
VP & CTO Cloud Solution – Storage, Futurewei