Top Takeaways from ESG’s White Paper on Multicloud Storage Environments

One of the biggest problems that organizations face is having too much data. This is an issue because organizations are not able to capitalize on the value it may bring if it was properly analyzed. Other common data issues include unlocking intelligence, enabling innovation, and data residency.

In order to resolve these data issues facing organizations, IBM has developed a vision to implement hybrid multicloud-enabled storage infrastructure that modernizes traditional workloads and is optimized to run next-generation workloads, enabling them to operate as dynamic ‘data-driven’ enterprises. ESG have taken steps to implement this vision referred to as Storage Maturity. Research shows that when an organization has taken the necessary steps to reach Storage Maturity, they have a competitive advantage due to their ability to properly harness the power of their data.

Keep reading to learn the top takeaways from ESG’s Research Insights white paper, Analyzing Outcomes Delivered by Modern Multicloud Storage Environments, that goes into further detail behind the concept of Storage Maturity.

Defining a Vision for Storage Maturity

In their research, ESG developed a 3-pillar model to objectively define a vision for Storage Maturity, so that it’s broadly applicable to organizations today. The 3-pillar model includes the following characteristics:

1. Data-Ready infrastructure
2. Strategic reuse of secondary data
3. Workload and data portability

Current State of Storage Maturity

After developing the 3-pillar model, ESG conducted a survey and used these characteristics to segment their survey respondents into four levels of Storage Maturity. The responses were categorized based on maturity points, and segmented into the following levels:

• Level 1: Laggard (0 – 25 maturity points)
• Level 2: Followers (25.5 – 50 maturity points)
• Level 3: Explorers (50.5 – 75 maturity points)
• Level 4: Leaders (75.5 – 100 maturity points)

The questions presented to the respondents in ESG’s research included the following subsets:

• Organizational Propensity to Containerize Legacy Applications
• Organizational Propensity to Have Developed Cloud-native Applications
• Frequency of Workload Migration
• Flash Storage Utilization
• Storage Virtualization Utilization
• DevOps Adoption
• Presence of Analytics-fed Business Processes
• Organizational Propensity to Use Secondary Storage for Application Development, Analytics

Based on their research, ESG concluded that the majority of organizations fell under Level 2, with 42% of respondents classified as Followers. 32% of respondents fell under Level 3, and the remainder, both at 13%, fell under Level 4 and Level 1. Therefore, the majority of organizations have not achieved enough progress to be classified as Leaders, as defined by the ESG Storage Maturity criteria.

Importance of Storage Maturity

Storage Maturity is important to organizations, especially when classified as a Leader, due to the following reasons:

• Improved business outcomes lead to more actionable business strategy, digital enablement, and IT-fueled profitability
• Enhanced IT effectiveness helps organizations lead on innovation, which is the precursor to private-cloud-driven efficiency – both of which drives business satisfaction
• Zeroing in on storage KPIs leads to productivity and execution, and also helps optimize strategic initiatives

If you are interested in improving your organization’s Storage Maturity, read the full ESG Insights Paper, Analyzing Outcomes Delivered by Modern Multicloud Storage Environments, to learn the benefits and actions you can take to improve your maturity level.