An overwhelming 90% of decision-makers in EMEA acknowledge there is a need for flash within their businesses. However, despite this need, cost and the lack of understanding of the benefits of flash in remain major barriers to widespread adoption in the region.
Key findings from a NetApp survey of 3 000 decision-makers in EMEA found that, despite the cost of flash technology decreasing, 40% of IT decision makers think it is too expensive to invest in. The apparent cost barrier is most prevalent among smaller businesses.
Meanwhile, 90% of respondents admitted there was a need for flash within their businesses. French and German IT decision makers from medium-sized businesses are the strongest advocates of flash, with 94% agreeing that “a lack of need for flash solutions” is not a barrier to flash adoption.
IT decision-makers revealed that one in five financial decision-makers (22%) within enterprises do not have sufficient understanding of the benefits of flash technology to make an investment. This barrier is most pronounced among larger enterprises, with almost one quarter of respondents stating financial decision makers do not know enough about flash technology.
“For many businesses looking to digitally transform, the idea of an all-flash data centre has become a practical reality,” says Gary de Menezes, country manager of NetApp South Africa. “However, despite the introduction of new high capacity drives and downward pricing trends of flash technologies, our research shows that there is still work to be done to educate business leaders on the true value of flash. We are working to remove the barriers and risk to flash adoption, so customers can realise the promise of an all-flash data centre, simply and cost effectively.
“The true benefit of flash storage is less power, less cooling, less space and less moving parts in combination with higher performance,” he adds. “Flash, together with NetApp software to manage data more efficiently between clouds in a scale-out fashion, enables the digital transformation.”
NetApp delivers one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of All-Flash arrays, providing customers with the scale, speed and data services required for the next-generation data centre.
