Is Open Source driving the Evolution of the Storage Industry?

A few decades ago the storage community had to stick to a few proprietary options. Many contributors started modifying the original protocols and develop code to suit their requirements and then releasing the new tools and solutions that helped the other groups in the community. This open source community brought in a few new innovation ideas from NAS—an inter OS storage—to OpenStack – A scalable public cloud implementation.

Open Source community, reduces the entry level investment for new and niche technology companies, which earlier needed to investment in obtaining licensees for starting the basic operations that included operating systems and development tools in the traditional model. This also brings in the changes in industry operating style, from switching the development model from the ‘iterative waterfall’ to the new agile sprint to DevOps. This transformation would not have been possible with the older traditional proprietary software where change was dictated by a few organizations based on their business needs.

This paper attempts to present a few developments that had driven disruptions in the storage industry, transforming it from Direct attached storage to cloud storage, and the role it can play in shaping the future.