Today’s data centre has ceased to be just a back-office IT facility; it has become an engine that drives innovation. The explosion of data, driven largely by generative artificial intelligence, is forcing a fundamental re-evaluation of the storage infrastructure.
In 2025, choosing a vendor is a strategic decision beyond hardware purchase. Market leaders are no longer competing on petabytes alone; they are delivering platforms that offer a cloud operating model, guaranteed cyber resilience and architecture built with AI requirements in mind .
New evaluation criteria: megatrends shaping the market
To understand which vendors will dominate in 2025, it is necessary to identify the key market forces. Four megatrends define new criteria for evaluating storage platforms:
- Ubiquitous artificial intelligence: AI workloads, especially training large language models (LLMs), require powerful GPU-based infrastructure and high-performance, low-latency storage. Demand is focused on all-flash NVMe architectures and scale-out designs that can power GPUs without creating bottlenecks. At the same time, vendors are integrating AIOps mechanisms directly into their platforms, automating management and enabling natural language administration.
- Sustainability mandate: Data centres are forecast to consume more than 1,000 TWh of energy by 2026, leading to energy supply constraints and increased operating costs. Energy efficiency is becoming a key factor in total cost of ownership (TCO). These pressures are driving innovations such as the adoption of QLC flash memory, business models that reduce e-waste and the standard use of liquid cooling.
- The cyber resilience imperative: The rise of ransomware attacks is making the storage layer the last line of defence. The focus is shifting from simple backup to end-to-end resilience, including real-time threat detection, immutable snapshots and guaranteed, fast recovery.
- Cloud operating model: the market is increasingly clamouring for a cloud-like experience for on-premises infrastructure, as seen in the rise in popularity of Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) offerings. IT teams want to manage infrastructure from a single, centralised console in the cloud, automate resource allocation and consume resources on demand, regardless of physical location.
Analysis of the top 5 suppliers
Based on the new criteria, five suppliers stand out as leaders ready to meet the challenges of 2025.
Dell Technologies: market leader with a comprehensive portfolio
Dell maintains its leadership position in terms of external storage market share. Its strategy is to leverage scale and a comprehensive portfolio to support a wide range of traditional and modern workloads.
Key products:
- PowerStore: The flagship mid-range all-flash platform, which recently gained support for the Nutanix Cloud Platform, offering customers an alternative to VMware.
- PowerFlex: a software-defined infrastructure (SDS) platform designed for performance and scalability, ideal for consolidating diverse corporate workloads.
- PowerScale: a scale-out NAS solution built to handle unstructured data, making it a key component in AI/ML workflows.
A differentiator for 2025: Width of offering and established market position. Dell is the choice for large enterprises that need a single supplier to support diverse workloads, from the network edge to the cloud.
Pure Storage: an innovator in simplicity and sustainability
Pure Storage’s strategy is based on operational simplicity, customer experience and a subscription model that eliminates the traditional storage lifecycle.
Key elements:
- Evergreen® model: A subscription that provides uninterrupted software and hardware updates, directly impacting TCO and reducing e-waste.
- Energy efficiency: Pure architecture delivers up to 85% lower power consumption compared to competitive all-flash arrays.
- Pure1 AI Copilot: AI assistant for storage management, allowing administrators to use natural language for troubleshooting and planning.
Distinction for 2025: A focus on customer experience, delivered through the Evergreen model and simple management. Pure is the choice for organisations that prioritise TCO, operational simplicity and sustainability.
NetApp: champion of multi-vendor hybrid cloud
NetApp’s strategy is to dominate the hybrid, multi-cloud data fabric through a software-first approach.
Key technologies:
- ONTAP software: the heart of the NetApp ecosystem, delivering unified data services that run consistently locally and natively across the three largest public clouds (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
- Cyber resilience: NetApp offers autonomous ransomware protection with guaranteed recovery from snapshots, using AI/ML to detect anomalies in real time.
- BlueXP: A unified management console based on AIOps that allows the entire data infrastructure to be managed from a single interface.
Distinction for 2025: Software. No other vendor provides a more seamless and consistent data management experience in a multi-tenant hybrid cloud landscape. NetApp is the choice for organisations strategically committed to a hybrid architecture.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE): On-premises cloud architect
HPE’s strategy is to deliver its entire IT infrastructure as a service through the HPE GreenLake platform, providing a cloud operational experience in a local environment.
Key technologies:
- HPE GreenLake: A platform that underpins HPE’s strategy, providing a unified, cloud-based console for managing and consuming IT resources in a pay-per-use model.
- HPE Alletra Storage MP: A hardware platform with a disaggregated scale-out architecture, meaning that compute resources and capacity can be scaled independently, providing flexibility and cost efficiency.
- Availability guarantee: HPE guarantees 100% data availability for its critical Alletra systems.
A differentiator for 2025: HPE’s vision is a radical departure from traditional infrastructure sales. It is the choice for enterprises that are fully committed to an on-premise cloud strategy and want to manage their entire infrastructure through a single as-a-service platform.
IBM: a bastion of corporate resilience and security
IBM’s storage strategy focuses on unparalleled cyber resilience, performance and integration in complex, often highly regulated IT environments.
Key technologies:
- FlashCore modules (FCMs): Unlike competitors using standard SSDs, IBM designs its own modules that handle tasks such as compression, encryption and real-time threat detection at the drive level, without affecting performance.
- Ransomware detection: FlashSystem uses machine learning models running on FCMs to detect anomalies indicative of ransomware in less than a minute.
- Safeguarded Copy: A function that creates immutable, isolated snapshots that cannot be modified or deleted during an attack.
Distinction for 2025: In an era of escalating cyber threats, IBM’s deep focus on security engineering is key. It is the choice for large enterprises in regulated industries where data integrity and recoverability are unquestionable.
Choosing a partner, not just a product
The storage decision in 2025 is not about which device has the best specifications, but which platform best fits an organisation’s strategic goals for AI, cloud and resilience.
The market has evolved from selling hardware to providing end-to-end intelligent platforms. The right choice is a supplier that acts as a partner, offering a platform that reduces complexity, mitigates risk and provides a basis for future innovation.
