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Storage Unpacked

A weekly podcast on deploying and managing enterprise storage and data

Home » #170 – The End of Pure Play Storage Companies

#170 – The End of Pure Play Storage Companies

21 August 2020 by Chris Evans

This week, Chris and Martin debate whether we have seen the end of new “pure play” storage companies that go the distance to full independence. Where there used to be many businesses like EMC, Pure Storage and NetApp, the number of public storage-only companies is dwindling. Is this market too challenging to get into or is there simply no money to be made?

If we look back 30 years, storage hardware was all the rage. Storage solutions were complex with custom hardware. These days, anyone can build a software-based solution and open source for everyone to use. We’ve also seen many companies raise hundreds of millions of dollars and be in no rush to IPO. So what’s going on? Listen to find out.

Vendors mentioned in this podcast: Pure Storage, NetApp, IBM, NGD Systems, Seagate, Western Digital, Tegile, Infinidat, VAST Data, Scality, Cloudian, Rubrik, Cohesity, Veeam, Nutanix, StorONE, Pavilion, DDN, Hammerspace, Storpool, StorageOS, Portworx, HPE, Hitachi, Oracle, Dell EMC, Softiron, MongoDB, Postgres, Databricks, Nebulon.

Elapsed Time: 00:43:11

Timeline

  • 00:00:00 – Intros
  • 00:03:20 – Storage hardware used to be cool
  • 00:06:00 – Unicorns and hectacorns!
  • 00:06:30 – Are companies looking to IPO or be acquired?
  • 00:07:50 – Margins on storage are thin
  • 00:11:15 – The Next Wave – Seagate/Western Digital
  • 00:14:10 – Infinidat – building traditional HDD systems
  • 00:17:30 – We like Howard!
  • 00:20:00 – Companies need new product lines
  • 00:21:00 – Where are object storage companies headed?
  • 00:23:45 – What about data protection companies? 
  • 00:26:00 – Secondary data usage means working with the business
  • 00:32:00 – Some companies will need to merge
  • 00:35:00 – Buying startup solutions could be risky if the companies are acquired
  • 00:36:30 – Open source storage could be an attractive fallback
  • 00:40:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

  • #168 – Storage Unicorns
  • #130 – Making Money in the Storage Business
  • #138 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part I)
  • #139 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part II)

Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #hpno.

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Filed Under: Garbage Collection, Midrange, Object Storage, Software-Defined Storage, Storage Hardware

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Pure Storage Acquires Portworx - Architecting IT says:
    17 September 2020 at 2:18 pm

    […] Recently on Storage Unpacked, we discussed the “what next” for pure-play storage companies like Pure Storage.  The acquisition of Portworx is clearly one step further in building out a long-term strategy for the future of Pure Storage as an independent entity.  […]

  2. Ditch The Trackers - Architecting IT says:
    16 February 2021 at 1:15 pm

    […] difficult to see whether storage sales tracking has any long-term benefit at all, as the age of the pure-play storage company comes to an end.   A much better indication of the strength of one vendor over another […]

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