Enterprises are outsourcing storage to help manage the volume and complexity of data operations, according to a report by Forrester. Over one-third of organizations use a storage management vendor, based on the analyst firm’s survey of 214 global hardware infrastructure technology decision-makers. 

A subscription-based model is preferred by nearly two-thirds of organizations, the report found. Global enterprise data and analytics technology decision-makers preferred the flexibility of subscription-based models and the freedom that comes from passing capacity management woes on to vendors, the report found. 

As data becomes more central to the business, enterprises are looking to simplify their data ecosystems. An overload of operations data, ongoing business growth and expanding web analytics are pushing data estates to their limit, according to the report. 

“Outsourced storage management and storage as a service offerings help reduce complexity for businesses that must streamline technology investments and focus on core business initiatives,” said Brent Ellis, senior analyst at Forrester, in the report. 

Yet, obstacles to cloud-based data services remain. Even as enterprises push to migrate masses of data, lingering concerns about security and interoperability persist, and many enterprise data and storage solutions are hard to replicate in public cloud, Forrester found. 

“This has driven many traditional storage vendors like Dell and NetApp to create cloud versions of their well-adopted on-premises storage APIs, thereby allowing enterprises an easier transition from data center workloads to cloud environments,” the report said. 

The result is heterogenous data solutions that incorporate cloud, on-prem and edge-based infrastructure. 

“Performance-oriented needs largely driven by genAI and big data analytics maintain a market for high-performance storage in the datacenter,” Ellis said.