A dedicated network of storage devices used to be everything in computing. Commonly known as storage area networks or SAN, these units solely provide shared storage for multiple servers and computers.

SAN came with increased performance, availability, centralized management, scalability, and data security. But we are now in 2022, and SANs no longer dominate the storage universe as they did about a decade ago.

Cloud storage now controls a significant chunk of business in bulk enterprise storage. How will storage area networks cope with this consequential loss of priority? This article analyzes some of the top 2022 trends in the SAN industry, and they include;

1. Storage Convergence

Storage convergence is one of the most notable developments in 2022 and beyond in the SAN market. This trend began gradually about a decade ago. The new trend now sees people keeping network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) together.

Of course, this was never the case. But today, a hyper-converged infrastructure exists to provide integrated and consolidated storage for all storage types. Analysts and industry experts claim that this trend can only continue since many people are looking into ways to consolidate their infrastructure. It avoids keeping data in silos, and sharing data becomes more straightforward.

2. SAN vs. File and Object

Arguably, the most significant SAN storage trend for 2022 remains about balancing between file and object on one side and SAN on the other end. SAN-based infrastructure still exists. And many organizations and institutions still use such infrastructure to deploy critical applications and databases.

Yet, organizations and institutions now use file and object storage for more modern applications. This new paradigm is both practical and efficient when storing more unstructured data.

3. Software-Enabled Storage or Open Source

SAN is a relatively old technology that dates back to the 90s. While we would not say that its entire SAN protocols and architecture are unique, better and more approaches now exist. And open-source, software-enabled is one of the alternatives.

Open-source storage options such as Web 3.0 is easier to implement, scalable, and incredibly efficient. This trend is changing the SAN market. And like you would expect, enterprise storage solutions continue to spring up. It bridges the traditional SAN shortfalls such as data corruption and inefficiency.

4. Storage-as-a-Service (StaaS)

In the future, expect to see more businesses or organizations moving their promise storage to vendor-managed StaaS arrangements. Rather than invest highly in storage infrastructure, companies will only rent the storage capacities they can manage and scale up consistently to meet their changing needs. Of course, this will come at lower costs and better data security.

Interestingly, storage vendors use highly intuitive artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) to ensure data security for multiple businesses and organizations. This system also makes data available to each entity without any security breaches. Modern organizations prefer it for several reasons. Firstly, it eliminates the need to invest highly in infrastructure. It also eliminates high storage unit administration and storage costs.

5. Using Shared Storage to Overcome RAID Limitations

Notably, using a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) comes with some limitations. It limits storage efficiency, exhibits low performance, inefficiency from low-performing hard drives, and the risk of data loss.

On the other hand, shared storage comes with notable advantages. Shared storage utilizes highly efficient GPUs instead of RAID. GPUs come with various benefits, including increased efficiency, better performance, and resilience.

The above trends will continue to change how the storage area network market will look in 2022. As technology advances, these trends will continue to shape and ultimately impact the SAN market. But this is not to say that this is the end of SAN. Instead, institutions that will continue to use san will either make adjustments to their systems or use hybrid storage.

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