This week, Chris and Martin debate whether we have seen the end of new “pure play” storage companies that go the distance to full independence. Where there used to be many businesses like EMC, Pure Storage and NetApp, the number of public storage-only companies is dwindling. Is this market too challenging to get into or is there simply no money to be made?

If we look back 30 years, storage hardware was all the rage. Storage solutions were complex with custom hardware. These days, anyone can build a software-based solution and open source for everyone to use. We’ve also seen many companies raise hundreds of millions of dollars and be in no rush to IPO. So what’s going on? Listen to find out.

Vendors mentioned in this podcast: Pure Storage, NetApp, IBM, NGD Systems, Seagate, Western Digital, Tegile, Infinidat, VAST Data, Scality, Cloudian, Rubrik, Cohesity, Veeam, Nutanix, StorONE, Pavilion, DDN, Hammerspace, Storpool, StorageOS, Portworx, HPE, Hitachi, Oracle, Dell EMC, Softiron, MongoDB, Postgres, Databricks, Nebulon.

Elapsed Time: 00:43:11

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:03:20 – Storage hardware used to be cool * 00:06:00 – Unicorns and hectacorns! * 00:06:30 – Are companies looking to IPO or be acquired? * 00:07:50 – Margins on storage are thin * 00:11:15 – The Next Wave – Seagate/Western Digital * 00:14:10 – Infinidat – building traditional HDD systems * 00:17:30 – We like Howard! * 00:20:00 – Companies need new product lines * 00:21:00 – Where are object storage companies headed? * 00:23:45 – What about data protection companies?  * 00:26:00 – Secondary data usage means working with the business * 00:32:00 – Some companies will need to merge * 00:35:00 – Buying startup solutions could be risky if the companies are acquired * 00:36:30 – Open source storage could be an attractive fallback * 00:40:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #168 – Storage Unicorns* #130 – Making Money in the Storage Business* #138 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part I)* #139 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part II)

Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #hpno.