IT Leaders Agree There is a Need for Flash

A NetApp survey of 3,000 IT decision makers reveals that IT leaders agree there is a need for Flash Arrays, yet cost remains a barrier to adoption in EMEA

Schipol, the Netherlands, — July 12, 2016 —

NetApp today announced the results of its first industry research on Flash adoption in EMEA. In a survey of 3,000 IT decision makers across the UK, France and Germany, 90% of respondents acknowledged 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 financial decision makers remain major barriers to widespread adoption in the region.

Key findings in the survey include:

• Despite the cost of Flash technology decreasing, 40 percent of IT decision makers think it is too expensive to invest in. The apparent cost barrier is most prevalent amongst smaller businesses in the UK (32 percent) and Germany (46 percent). In France, these figures were level across all business sizes: 42 percent of senior decision makers from smaller as well as larger businesses stated concerns regarding cost.
• 90 percent 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 percent agreeing that ‘a lack of need for Flash solutions’ is not a barrier to Flash adoption. Meanwhile in the UK, the biggest support for Flash comes from smaller businesses, with 92 percent of respondents stating they did not see a lack of need as a barrier to adopting Flash solutions.
• IT decision makers revealed that one in five financial decision makers (22 percent) 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. Meanwhile, the issue is most prevalent among UK enterprises (24 percent) and remains consistent across all business sizes.

“For many businesses looking to digitally transform, the idea of an All-Flash data center has become a practical reality,” said Manfred Reitner, Senior Vice President & General Manager EMEA, NetApp. “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 center, 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,” explains Peter Wüst, NetApp Senior Director Emerging Solutions & Innovation Group EMEA. “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 portfolio of All-Flash arrays, providing customers with the scale, speed and data services required for the next-generation data center. The NetApp Flash portfolio helps customers achieve the best outcomes across priority deployment models including performance applications, virtualised infrastructure and cloud-like infrastructure.

NetApp’s survey of 3,000 IT decision makers across the UK, France and Germany was conducted by Opinion Matters in May 2016. More details and a summary of the survey results can be found here.