Enterprises have a variety of applications; the sheer scale of data volumes, data types, and business processes associated with them is putting unprecedented pressure on storage infrastructure. These business demands mean that technologies developed a decade ago are no longer able to serve the demands of today and tomorrow. The once-stodgy world of storage is going through some dramatic changes that promise new opportunities — but also pose new challenges — for enterprises and vendors alike. It’s time to examine your storage investments.

Vendors and investors are spending to change this world. Did you know that more than $1.5 billion has been invested in storage technology startups in the past three years? These companies have already raised north of $5 billion in their brief lives. And that’s purely money raised from external investors such as VC firms; it doesn’t include investments by public cloud providers or vendors that spend their own funds on product research & development.

Connect these investments driving new storage platforms and technologies with the infrastructure that business and IT decision makers demand. You need to know which technologies can solve your business problems and have the potential to grow at the pace of your business.

All of these questions fuel my research agenda, and I’m actively working on a series of storage-focused reports to help you. The first in that series is a Forrester Tech Tide™ report that focuses on putting all storage technologies on the table. Key questions that this report aims to answer are:

  1. What business value does each technology deliver? How does it promise to serve tomorrow’s needs?
  2. How mature is a given technology?
  3. Should you plan to invest, divest, experiment, or maintain in each of these technologies?
  4. How expensive can each technology be?

This report will be rich with inputs coming from all of you. If you are a vendor, what new technologies do you offer, and why are they promising? If you’re a technology buyer, what have your experiences with new and old technologies been?

I have created a survey to gather your inputs. If you’d like to share your experiences, please complete the survey here. As a reward for your time, you will receive a copy of the final report. Thank you, and I look forward to working with each one of you.