The document discusses the growing trend of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and its impact on IT solutions, highlighting how HCI is evolving towards software-defined technologies that decouple software from hardware to improve flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Key predictions for 2018 include the shift of HCI to software-only models, the integration of edge computing into HCI designs, and the ongoing evolution of data management away from proprietary solutions. Industry insights suggest that HCI will facilitate a hybrid IT environment while addressing emerging needs around performance, scalability, and operational efficiency.

2. AbacusNext - http://bit.ly/2F1t6t6
CYBERSECURITY TAKES THE DRIVER'S SEAT, AND COMMODITY
HARDWARE GETS A POPULARITY BOOST
Jerome Fodor,Chief Technology Officer,
AbacusNext
Hyperconverged infrastructure and software defined technologies
will make commodity hardware more popular
BothVMware and now Microsoft with Server 2016, have gone all-in with
comprehensive software defined technologies built into their OS/Hypervisor.The
flexibility, feature set, and robustness have in many cases caught up or surpassed
traditional storage/network platforms. Combine this with the trend of most network
appliance makers now having parity with their virtualized solutions and you get the
ability to completely detach software function from hardware.
This is driving data center architects from enterprise all the way to SMB to rethink
how they design from the ground up, similar to the approach that major cloud players
have been doing for years now.This is where commodity servers come into play.The
chassis and component options in this space are limitless and often times,
significantly more flexible than traditional server maker options.This is critical when
looking to maximize the performance and efficiency of a hyperconverged and
software defined workload. Let's also not forget the other elephant in the room - it's
usually much more cost effective.

3. Cloudistics - http://bit.ly/2srL8BX
WHY WE WON'T SEE MORE THAN 50% OF WORKLOADS RUNNING
IN THE PUBLIC CLOUD IN 2018 OR EVER
Dr. Jai Menon,Chief Scientist at
Cloudistics
Public-cloud-like on-premise systems are an increasingly viable
alternative to public cloud.
Indeed, it can no longer be argued that the agility and economy of the public cloud
cannot be replicated on-premises. Instead, hyperconverged and superconverged
systems increasingly provide the infrastructure for new on-premise app-centric scale-
out cloud platforms that support public-cloud-like usage-based pricing and higher-
level application services.
The result is a public cloud experience on-premises, and one that the customer
doesn't even have to own or manage in many instances. It turns out that you can have
your cake and eat it. Plus, this provides the ideal public-cloud alternative to those 75%
of workloads that have reasonably predictable IT resource requirements.The other
25% of workloads are spiky and unpredictable, and therefore clearly ideal for the
public cloud.

4. Comtrade Software - http://bit.ly/2BpNGmX
MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHAT’S THE FAIREST
TECHNOLOGY OF ALL
Goran Garevski, Vice President,
Engineering, Comtrade Software
Scale-out File and Object Storage Use Cases as Part of the
Evolution of Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)
For many companies, the initial set of use cases for HCI has been solely focused
on production applications, i.e. Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc. Now that HCI
technology has matured and customers see the benefit of it, they ask, "why can't
we use the same infrastructure to eliminate separate silos for file and object?"
It's a great question and this would allow them to gain much better efficiency
from an infrastructure purchase perspective and more than that save a
significant amount of investment in operational management costs. We are
already beginning to see customers actively incorporating file and object storage
as part of their HCI investments and expect it to continue well into 2018 and
beyond.
Subbiah Sundaram, Vice
President, Products, Comtrade
Software

5. Cyxtera - http://bit.ly/2H76Aj7
CYXTERA VISIONARIES SHARE PREDICTIONS FOR 2018
Jason Lochhead, CTO of
Infrastructure for Cyxtera
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is the "Next BigThing" in IT
• As HCI becomes more pervasive, we'll see continued improvement in the ease of
platform management.One of the biggest selling points of HCI is simplicity. HCI
vendors will continue to make it easier to deploy and operate their platforms,
particularly when it comes to lifecycle management. Upgrading and patching will
resemble a phone or laptop experience. Updates will download automatically and be
applied with little or no disruption.
• Another impending trend is the majority of HCI systems will be all-flash rather than
hybrid configurations.The cost of flash has dropped while density has continued to
improve.That combined with de-duplication and compression has made all-flash
preferable to spinning disk, in terms of price and performance in most cases.
• Finally, the HCI vendor landscape will consolidate.There are a few top players in the
HCI market and many smaller companies vying for a share of the business.The
ecosystem will start to consolidate via acquisition or changes in strategy.

6. DataCore Software - http://bit.ly/2ssRVLM
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES REAL-TIME RESPONSE
AND SOFTWARE-DEFINED TECHNOLOGIES TO REDUCE THE PAIN
OF DISRUPTION
George Teixeira, Executive Chairman,
DataCore Software
Software-Defined and Hyperconverged Become Hybrid-Converged
A hot segment of the software-defined storage (SDS) market over the last few years
has been hyperconverged storage. DataCore itself, has seen well over 60% growth
rates in its hyperconverged solutions over the last year alone. In 2018,
hyperconvergence and SDS will blur their lines, and hyperconvergence will become a
subset of an overall software-defined model where customers can have the flexibility
to choose how to deploy, whether on physical hardware, virtual machines, on
appliances, or in the cloud.The end result is still optimizing business productivity and
agility.
The two methods will continue to blend into more of a "hybrid-converged" model
that is part of a larger continuum of infrastructure modernization and convergence,
and users will be able to easily move among deployment options - from storage
virtualization, through converged/server SAN, to hyperconverged, to cloud, to hybrid-
converged - all under the control of a unified management plane spanning existing
legacy infrastructure and new hybrid-converged infrastructure, with the software-
defined flexibility to absorb future technologies.

7. Maxta Inc. - http://bit.ly/2BTMrOb
THREE WAYS HYPERCONVERGENCE (HCI) WILL CHANGE THE
GAME IN 2018
Hyperconvergence shifts to software, but appliance vendors will
struggle to make this shift
• In 2018, hyperconverged appliance vendors will begin to offer software-only versions of their
products. HCI appliance vendors know very well that a software business is much more profitable.
However, "de-integrating" a hyperconverged appliance and delivering HCI as software-only is
easier said than done. Retrofitting software that was designed and optimized for a single
hardware configuration to run on all or most x86 standard configurations is going to be more
difficult and will take longer than most people expect.
Service providers turn to hyperconvergence to be more cloud-like
• xSPs will have to move to a hyperconverged model to have any chance of coming close to
public cloud economics. However, xSPs will have to move directly to a hyperconvergence
software model since most hyperconverged appliances are more expensive than storage
arrays and have a rigid scaling model that doesn't fit the agility needs of xSPs.
Hypervisor support begins to matter
• While support for multiple hypervisors, especially VMware and RedHat, will be essential with HCI,
the ability to migrate from one hypervisor to another, and possibly back again, really brings the
choice of hypervisors to life.
Yoram Novick, founderand CEO
Maxta Inc.

8. Nerdio - http://bit.ly/2o0VV0H
PREDICTIONS FOR VIRTUALIZATION IN 2018
Amol Dalvi, Senior Directorof
Product, Nerdio
HCI will begin to replace traditional virtualization
HCI is an IT infrastructure that uses a hypervisor to virtualize all the elements of
a traditional hardware system. It's completely defined by software, including
software-defined networking (SDN) and a storage area network (SAN). An HCI
usually runs on an industry-standard physical server.
HCI will begin to become a popular extension of traditional virtualization in
2018, primarily as a means to simplify IT operations. Its ability to manage
components from different vendors with hypervisors will allow organizations to
move away from a silo system that depends on physical hardware.This trend
will be most prevalent for SMBs, where this reduction in complexity will result
in a greater benefit to an organization's bottom line.
The cost of virtualization software will decrease in 2018, allowing virtualization
to play a greater role in the commoditization of hardware.The trend
toward hyper-converged platforms will result in the inclusion of hypervisors as
a standard feature of an IT infrastructure, rather than an independent software
product. Hypervisor vendors will become more likely to form partnerships with
public cloud providers, rather than competing for on-premises deployments.
This trend will eventually lead to license-free virtualization software as this IT
deployment model matures.

9. Pivot3 - http://bit.ly/2o302sP
THE EVOLUTION OF INFRASTRUCTURE AGILITY IN 2018 AND
BEYOND
Edge and Cloud
Cloud, IoT and edge computing will have a material impact on HCI across the board, especially
for long-term storage. Enterprises should begin using edge design patterns in their
infrastructure architectures - particularly those with significant IoT elements. A good starting
point could be using colocation and edge-specific networking capabilities - features that could
be differentiators for multiple HCI vendors.
It's a common assumption that Cloud and Edge are competing approaches, but that's a
fundamental misunderstanding of the concepts. When implemented together, the Cloud is
used to create the service-oriented model, while the Edge offers a delivery style that allows for
the execution of disconnected aspects of cloud service.
There is also more value being placed on the notion of distributed - not centralized -
computing, and putting remote office functionality at the edge.This is certainly true for
companies that are looking to lean more heavily on IoT, or those leaning on sensors and
analytics. HCI is a perfect fit for that. As IoT picks up steam in 2018, we're going to see a lot
more ROBO deployments from larger enterprises.
Additionally, as we develop the intelligence and automation capabilities associated with cloud
and edge approaches, customers will be able to choose what to push to the cloud and what to
push to traditional infrastructure. Whether it's low priority jobs, low priority workloads, or
power-hungry applications, flexibility and the economics of choice will become a factor in
customer evaluations of HCI.
Bruce Milne, Vice President and Chief
Marketing Officerat Pivot3

10. Primary Data - http://bit.ly/2Hb22Z0
7 TRENDS WILL IMPACT ENTERPRISE PRIORITIES
Lance Smith, CEO, Primary Data
IT begins to choose custom management over hyperconverged
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) aims to meet data's changing needs
through automatic tiering and centralized management. HCI systems have
plenty of appeal as a fast fix to pay as you grow, but in the long run, these
systems represent just another larger silo for enterprises to manage.
In addition, since hyperconverged systems frequently require proprietary or
dedicated hardware, customer choice is limited when more compute or
storage is needed. Most environments don't require both compute and
storage in equal measure, so their budget is wasted when only more CPU or
more capacity is really what applications need. Most HCI architecture rely on
layers of caches to ensure good storage performance. Unfortunately,
performance is not guaranteed when a set of applications running in a
compute node overruns a caches capacity.
As IT begins to custom-tailor storage capabilities to real data needs with
metadata management software, enterprises will begin to move away from
bulk deployments of hyperconverged infrastructure and instead embrace a
more strategic data management role that leverages precise storage
capabilities on premises and into the cloud.

11. Red Hat - http://bit.ly/2BUB6NE
INCREASED DECOUPLING OF APPLICATIONS FROM
INFRASTRUCTURE, AND DEEPER INVESTMENT IN TELCOS, IOT
Irshad Raihan, senior manager,
Product Marketing, Red Hat Storage
The end of point-play hyperconverged solutions
In 2018, enterprise customers will look for even more cost-effective and efficient
ways to consolidate and manage their infrastructure using software-defined
technologies as we approach the next wave of hyperconvergence, beyondVDI
use cases.
All-flash and NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) will continue to become
standard features in hyperconverged storage solutions, as will hyperconvergence
itself become a standard feature of all data center infrastructures in the coming
years.
More importantly, customers will start to move away from single point-play
hyperconverged solutions to trusted advisors with a broader portfolio and long
term vision.

12. Scale Computing - http://bit.ly/2nWcoUu
WHY 2018 IS THE YEAR OF THE HCI AND THE EDGE
Jason Collier, co-founder,Scale
Computing
The Future is Hybrid
In 2018 and beyond, the future is all about simplifying hybrid IT to accommodate
new trends like edge computing that requires higher performance and higher
bandwidth.According to a report from Market Research Future, the edge
computing market is expected to experience a compound annual growth rate of
35 percent, reaching $33.75 billion by 2023.
This is why hyperconverged solutions with a hybrid cloud model will come into
play in the coming years. Hyperconverged solutions will be needed to support
remote and branch locations in addition to making the edge more intelligent.
As more organizations utilize the hybrid cloud model, solutions will be sought
that allow them to use their apps created for on-premises to run in the cloud,
which will be a game changer for end users, channel partners and MSPs globally.

13. StorMagic - http://bit.ly/2G7uMAq
THE FUTURE OF STORAGE IS AT THE EDGE
Hans O'Sullivan, CEO, StorMagic
HyperconvergedAppliances Shape the Datacenter
Architecture
Hyperconverged appliances will continue their fast growth in popularity and change
they way data centers are architected in 2018. However, there are a number of serious
drawbacks associated with HCI appliances like cost and over-provisioning, which
don't lend themselves well to edge computing environments. End users looking to
build edge infrastructure will need to find more flexible solutions to keep to their
strict budgets.
At this point, it's clear that the edge computing trend isn't going anywhere. It's
becoming easier and easier to deploy low-cost, high-performance compute systems
at the edge and this is driving innovation in the applications space. But, this drives
even more data creation and collection - and the storage vendor community is taking
notice.You can expect a lot more innovation in storage at the edge for sure.
Dare we say? 2018 is the year of the edge!

14. VMware - http://bit.ly/2ChlI9Y
HCI MEANS 2018 WILL NOT BE THE SAME
Lee Caswell, VP of Products, Storage
and Availability Business Unit, VMware
HCI will drive long-lasting changes to IT staff, servers, and storage architectures. In
2018, we will see these changes adopted most quickly by companies that are locked in
competitive battles where HCI is the latest technological tool to speed responsiveness
to a changing environment. Smart companies will see HCI as an essential tool where
IT becomes a service to applications, rather than their master.
The massive adoption of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), led byVMware vSAN,
is driving momentous changes deep into IT organizations of all sizes. As application
users demand that IT deliver a brand new level of quick-twitch agility, IT owners are
turning to HCI to reduce planning cycles with developer-ready infrastructure that is
ready on-demand across traditional and cloud-native applications, and that is
seamlessly available from the edge to the core to the cloud.
Here are three specific trends we expect to see as HCI adoption races at a pace not
seen since the early days of virtualization.
1. HCIWill Consolidate IT Staffs
2. The Resurgence of Rack Servers
3. New HCI Features Will OutpaceTraditional Storage

15. READ 280+ EXPERT PREDICTIONS AT http://bit.ly/2DQi2OT