The vast majority of respondents polled by DataCore say they plan to or have already moved to software-defined storage, with simplifying different models of storage the primary business driver.

The study, which polled 426 IT professionals currently using or evaluating various storage models, found that simplifying storage was the primary reason for implementing software-defined storage for 55% of respondents. Future-proofing infrastructure was cited by 53% of those polled, while avoiding hardware lock-in was also cited by more than half (52%) of respondents.

Despite this, almost one third (31%) of those polled said that cloud storage initiatives failed to reduce costs. 29% noted that managing object storage was ‘difficult’, while 16% said utilising Flash failed to accelerate applications.

The report also examined levels of spending on various technologies. Not surprisingly, software-defined storage topped the rankings, with 29% of respondents saying more than a tenth of the company’s overall budget was allocated to it. In what was described by DataCore as a surprising finding, 70% of respondents said investing in OpenStack storage was ‘not applicable’.

Uptake of hyperconverged infrastructure was also lower than expected, the report noted, with 34% of respondents saying they had considered hyperconverged but not deployed it, and an additional 33% saying they were not considering it at all.

Writing for this publication earlier this month, Richard Eglon, marketing director at Agilitas, mused on what the rise of hyperconverged means for marketers. “Marketers have always had to adapt to change and embrace technology advancements in order to succeed,” he wrote. “As a result, a new breed of the collaborative hyper-marketer is emerging that will need to accelerate that pace of change in today’s hyperconverged workplace.”

You can take a look at the full report here.