In the past decade, Linux and high volume x86 servers transformed the server market. In the coming decade, we expect open software-defined storage solutions to transform the storage market and, ultimately, the way businesses operate. The economics of scale-out storage are compelling, and map to the requirements we’ve heard from customers around the globe who are thinking about storage in new ways in the face of unprecedented data growth.

IDC has determined that Red Hat’s approach to scale-out storage can present a significant value. In a recently published IDC white paper, sponsored by Red Hat, on the Economics of Software-based Storage, IDC reports:

"Procuring server hardware with internal disks and deploying a software-based storage solution such as Red Hat Storage Server can be nearly 29% cheaper than deploying an average capacity-optimized NAS solution and nearly 49% cheaper than deploying an average capacity-optimized midrange disk storage system. Over a five-year period, these costs shift to 33% and 52%, respectively. While these costs do not include people resource costs, IDC estimates that on average, businesses can save at least 20% on people resource costs."

Red Hat Storage, an innovative, open software-based solution for scale-out storage, helps enterprises cope with and manage the explosion of big, semi-structured and unstructured data growth. Red Hat Storage deployed across physical, virtual, public and hybrid cloud resources delivers a unified storage and data platform. Enterprise IT management can capitalize on the cost benefits resulting from using common-off-the-shelf x86 servers to reduce overall storage costs at scale while breaking free from proprietary storage vendor lock-in.

Click here to download the full IDC Economics of Software-based Storage white paper. Visit here for more information on Red Hat Storage. And, visit here for a case study on Intuit and read about the way Red Hat Storage enables their reduction in cost per terabyte by a factor of 16 to 1.