All-flash arrays supporting digital transformation in APJ

Source: EMC/IDC infographic.

EMC, the information infrastructure solutions provider, has shared findings from IDC’s recent survey* on the role of flash in driving business transformation. The survey, titled Flash in Driving Business Transformation in the Digital Age, takes a closer look at the priorities impacting businesses in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) and how flash technology supports them.

Source: EMC/IDC infographic.

The top reasons business leaders initiate digital transformation of business processes and business models, according to the study, are to:

 Quickly bring to market new products and services (74.9%)

 Build deeper understanding of customers’ buying preferences (74.6%)

 Improve the quality and response time of post-sales services (61.5%)

and

The top drivers for adopting all-flash arrays (AFAs) are:

 Reducing storage capex spend (69%)
 Reducing product development cycles/ quick-to-market (68%)
 Supporting larger numbers of customers, partners and suppliers (63%) 

Source: EMC/IDC infographic.

To support these transformation priorities, demand for all-flash array (AFA) solutions is set to increase significantly, with a 40% uplift in business adoption predicted over the next 12 months. Seven in 10 (72%) of respondents are expected to deploy AFA by mid-2016, a 40% annual increase. 

Organisations surveyed in China (15.5%), India (24.7%) and Australia (23%) appeared most bullish about the prospect of all-flash data centres in the future, indicating that it will become a reality in their data centres within the next two years.

Confidence in business leaders that AFAs can enable business agility and accelerate business performance was also high: 89% of APJ respondents indicated they were confident in exploiting AFA to generate significant business innovation today or in the future.

“Operational efficiency, cost optimisation and market expansion are the top three strategic imperatives for businesses in APJ, based on IDC’s C-Suite Barometer survey in 2015. All-flash storage systems not only drive cost optimisation but help drive business transformation and innovation which are the cornerstones for success in IDC’s 3rd Platform era. Flash will help IT deliver new capabilities to business that will enable them to become much more predictive than reactive in the increasingly hyper-competitive business environment,” said Rajnish Arora, Vice President, Enterprise Computing IDC Asia/Pacific.

Added Dmitri Chen, Chief Operating Officer of EMC Asia Pacific and Japan: “In today’s business environment, executives face an unprecedented level of complexity. On top of this, the pressure to produce faster and innovate quicker is increasing. Access to real-time analytics with quicker decision support and real-time development is key, making AFA one of the fastest growing segments. In fact, customers of our AFA Solution, XtremIO, are dramatically reducing development time and driving down costs, achieving the agility they need to remain competitive.”

Hashtag: #ThinkForward50

*The research targeted key infrastructure decision makers across 700+ enterprises with at least 100TBs of primary storage. The respondents were from Australia, India, Japan, Korea, China and Singapore.