One is born with two, two is born with three, and three is born with all things. Three years later, Inspur Storage has completed its transformation from a “niche player” to a “challenger”.
Recently, Gartner announced the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage Arrays, including Dell, Pure Storage, NetApp, HPE, Infinidat, Hitachi Vantara, Thirteen global mainstream storage manufacturers including Inspur were selected. Among them, Inspur Storage achieved cross-quadrant promotion, from the Niche Quadrant to the Challenger Quadrant, becoming the only storage manufacturer to achieve a quadrant leap this year.
Having crossed the quadrant, how will the “challenger” Inspur Storage respond to the greater challenges in the future? In the future, how should Inspur Storage achieve another quadrant leap and become the "leader" in the global storage market?
In releasing the latest 2020 Magic Quadrant report for mainstream storage arrays, Gartner defined mainstream storage arrays as all-flash or hybrid flash and disk-local storage arrays that provide block services (structured data workloads) and Possible file and object access.
Regarding the future direction of the primary storage market, Gartner analysts also listed three strategic planning assumptions:
In summary, as the digital transformation of enterprises accelerates in the future, NVMe, AIOps , public cloud integration and other new technologies will reshape the next generation of primary storage systems.
Let’s look at NVMe first. If all-flash memory is the general trend of the future storage market, then NVMe SSD is the development trend of the all-flash memory market. Today, major storage manufacturers around the world are accelerating the launch of new generation storage products based on NVMe. NVMe has even been considered the de facto standard in the storage field.
At the same time, the life cycle of the storage system is a complex system. Solving the complex life cycle operation and management of the storage system requires the support of AI technology. For example, using AIOps to identify internal loads and pattern characteristics, Adjust the hardware resource utilization to the highest position to create easier-to-use storage from the perspective of operation and maintenance management.
In addition, cloud computing allows enterprises to expand their data distribution from local data centers to public cloud platforms with higher computing power and larger space. In the entire IT architecture, storage is the industry closest to data. It must be able to help application companies achieve a closer connection between their own data centers and public cloud platforms, in order to establish a smooth data flow model.
This is the general trend of the primary storage market and the future development direction of storage manufacturers.
Regarding Inspur’s cross-quadrant, Gartner commented, “Inspur’s storage product portfolio includes HF and AS series, which can meet users’ needs for mid- and high-end storage. During the evaluation period, Inspur Storage released an end-to-end The all-flash array HF5000G5 with NVMe technology has also released a CSI driver suitable for K8S environments and upgraded the AIOps platform, achieving enhancements in overall software and platform functions."
It can be seen that Inspur’s “upgrade” is highly consistent with the current development trend of the main storage market.
First, market breakthrough:
Sun Bin, chief architect of Inspur Storage, shared a set of data on Inspur Storage’s large projects, namely orders between 100,000 and 400,000 US dollars. , has achieved doubling growth this year, which shows that Inspur Storage’s products are being chosen by some large enterprises. In terms of sales, 30% of Inspur Storage's orders are sold through ISVs, SI system integrators, and distributors. This ratio has increased by 10 points compared with before, which proves that Inspur Storage is still empowering its partners.
Inspur Storage has nearly two decades of technological innovation and accumulation, and occupies an important share among industry users.
These include in the communications industry, Inspur Storage won the bid for China Mobile's distributed storage procurement four times in three years, especially in 2020, Inspur won the bid for China Mobile's high-end storage core business system, which "underpins" China Mobile's data elements; in the scientific research industry, Inspur It stores massive data from top users in industries such as China Sky Eye Astronomy Research, Tsinghua University Living Brain Imaging, Fudan University Brain-inspired Research, Central China Brain Mapping Research, Sun Yat-sen University Precision Medicine Research, etc. At the same time, Inspur Storage began to promote its products in overseas markets such as Russia, Germany, Poland, Japan, and South Korea.
Second, technological breakthroughs:
From Q3 2019 to Q2 2020, Inspur applied for and accepted more than 1,000 patents within one year, about one-third of which were It has to do with all-flash memory. Inspur Storage has developed NVMe SSD and is also actively participating in industry and all-flash standards and testing specifications, as well as the construction of enterprise standards and specifications. At the same time, Inspur Storage is also actively cooperating with domestic first-class universities and research institutes, such as Tsinghua University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in the cutting-edge emerging technology fields of storage.
Based on the concept of "cloud storage and intelligent operation of new data", Inspur Storage continues to increase investment in the field of unified storage, launching the industry's first all-flash storage equipped with Optane dual-port NVMe SSD, based on iTurbo intelligent The engine technology further enhances the storage system's intelligent sensing, multi-path selection, self-organization and calling capabilities. Currently, Inspur Storage has achieved the world's highest results in SPC-1 with 16 controls, 8 controls, and unit cost performance tests.
From "niche" to "challenger", it means that Inspur Storage's products and market strength have made a comprehensive leap, and it has the opportunity to become an industry leader in the future.
With the acceleration of new infrastructure and the rapid development of the digital economy, a new data era is coming.
Data, as a new factor of production, has undergone essential changes driven by new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and 5G. It has transitioned from "manual collection and manual intervention" in the past to "machine generation and machine processing" now. In the new era, data types are becoming more and more abundant, and the scale of data volume is also increasing. Data is becoming an important element in management, control, production, service, decision-making and other links. It needs to be comprehensively implemented from acquisition, storage, management and use. Life cycle acceleration.
The new data era requires new storage concepts and also breeds new market opportunities. Can the "challenger" Inspur Storage take the opportunity to achieve promotion to the quadrant again?
Focusing on the new data era, Inspur Storage has proposed the storage concept of "cloud storage for intelligent use and operation of new data", focusing on the ultimate technology, storage as a platform, and the creation of data "system" storage infrastructure. It is hoped that through The closed loop of the four key elements of "ideas, technology, products, and solutions" accelerates data flow, data processing, data sharing, data online and data security, helping enterprises to completely release the value of data. Today, Inspur Storage is comprehensively promoting the application of emerging technologies such as end-to-end NVMe, intelligent operation and maintenance, and multi-cloud docking in storage products to drive the digital transformation of enterprises.
Due to its profound accumulation in new scenarios in the industry, Inspur Storage has received high recognition from Gartner. From the quadrant promotion, it can be seen that no matter in terms of product performance, market position, or user satisfaction, Inspur Storage has delivered a satisfactory “answer sheet”.
Can we see the “leader” wave storage in the future Magic Quadrant? This is the next new challenge for Inspur Storage.