The storage infrastructure industry has proven to be more resistant to change than most IT market segments, but it isn’t invulnerable to the disruptive force known as the cloud. Evidence of this comes via a new report from 451 Research Inc., which says spending on public cloud storage is set to double by this time next year.

451 Research made its prediction in the first edition of its new Voice of the Enterprise survey, where it found that enterprises will continue to upgrade their storage environments this year, with many planning to increase spending. However, the survey finds that most enterprises are looking to increase cloud storage spending at the expense of traditional on-premises storage.

The research, which was based on responses from a survey of 700 IT professionals, found that some 70 percent of organizations plan to increase storage spending over the next 12 months. It also found that organizations will allocate 17 percent of their annual storage spending on public cloud storage by 2017, compared to just 8 percent in 2015. However, cloud storage spending will grow even more in some verticals, such as retail, where it will account for 25 percent of total storage spending.

As such, on-premises storage spending is set to take a hit, with spending set to fall from 70 percent in 2015 to just 58 percent in 2017. Traditional storage giants like EMC Corp., which currently dominates the market, are likely to come under intense competition from cloud rivals like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, which will both become top-five ranked storage vendors by 2017, 451 Research said.

“The storage infrastructure segment may have proven itself hardy to change over the years, but it is not immune to the same uber-trends that are fundamentally disrupting the role of IT at organizations of all sizes,” said Simon Robinson, research vice president at 451 and research director of the new Voice of the Enterprise: Storage service.

“IT managers are recognizing the need for storage transformation to meet the realities of the new digital economy, especially in terms of improved efficiency and agility in the face of relentless data growth. It’s clear from our Q4 study that emerging options, especially public cloud storage and all-flash array technologies, will be increasingly important components in this transformation.”

451 Research noted that spending on all-flash arrays will also increase this year, at the expense of spending on traditional storage area network (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS) products, which will decline. However, tape products will see the largest decline in spending.

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