Storage virtualization provider DataCore Software has just published the findings of its latest survey of Software-defined storage (SDS) users, revealing a surprisingly slow rate of adoption for flash-based devices like solid-state drives.

This marks the fourth year in succession that DataCore has undertaken its “The State of Software-Defined Storage” survey. This time around it took responses from 388 IT professionals about the driving forces behind SDS and their biggest storage challenges.

This year’s survey fielded different questions from previous years and so no direct comparison is available. Even so, DataCore’s not-so-surprising conclusion was that SDS is the best solution to challenges like migrating between devices from different vendors, and managing a diversity of devices. What’s more surprising is that few IT experts seem to be listening, as there was very little increase in the total storage capacity devoted to flash-based storage devices.

Almost 63 percent of respondents said that less than 10 percent of their storage capacity was devoted to flash/SSDs, compared to 60 percent who said they don’t use flash in all of their environments last year.

“With all of the hype around the ‘all-flash datacenter,’ it is clear that new fast hardware technology alone is not the answer,” said Evaluator Group analyst Randy Kerns in the report.

“There are multiple critical factors preventing organizations from making this move — lack of smart software that integrates and optimizes their use, the relative high cost and the realizations that not all applications benefit from flash devices.”

DataCore’s findings are in contrast to other surveys, which have found that most enterprises use flash/SSD devices in some capacity. For example, EMC’s Managing Storage: Trends, Challenges, and Options survey from last year reported that 56 percent of companies were using flash drives of some sort, although it didn’t reveal what capacity of storage organizations were devoting to SDS.

However, EMC’s report indicated that while a majority of organizations are using flash/SSD, most do so in hybrid systems paired with traditional disk drives. This strategy allows IT administrators to leverage the superior performance of flash/SSD in critical areas while keeping costs to a minimum.

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