THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY - Futurum Research · Persistent memory will help drive value across a range of use cases. Persistent memory is clearly viewed as high priority for

COPYRIGHT © 2019 FUTURUM RESEARCH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

FUTURUM RESEARCH

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY

As applications become increasingly data hungry and compute resources continue to push the edge of performance

and efficiency higher, what is the role and value of persistent memory in bringing compute and data closer together?

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Q3 2019 DANIEL NEWMAN FRED MCCLIMANS

FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL ANALYST RESEARCH DIRECTOR & SENIOR ANALYST

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY INDEX

COPYRIGHT © 2019 FUTURUM RESEARCH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

INDEX

Thoughts from the Futurum Research team 3

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4

INTRODUCTION 7

Methodology 7

Demographics 7

ISSUE ONE: Perceptions on the Value of Memory 11

ISSUE TWO: Use Cases and Memory Needs 13

ISSUE THREE: Applications and Needs 17

ISSUE FOUR: Memory Selection Drivers 23

ISSUE FIVE: Memory Procurement and Budgets 29

CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS 33

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY INTRODUCTION


THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY INTRODUCTION Memory that doesn’t remember has limited value. Extremely limited. In this paper, The State of Persistent Memory, we take a look at the different drivers of memory consumption, evaluate the potential opportunities it creates, and discuss the potential pitfalls that must be avoided. To understand and analyze the dynamics of this market, and to better inform our base of enterprise and services clients, Futurum Research designed and implemented a primary research program designed to address the following issues and questions: • How important is memory and memory selection relative to enterprise data/compute needs?

• What are the use cases driving enterprise consumption of faster, more persistent memory?

• Where are the biggest needs within the enterprise for non-volatile or persistent memory that keeps needed data where it’s needed?

• Who are the primary decision makers in an organization in terms of selecting the type of memory used in and on your user’s compute and storage systems?

• Which specific applications are creating the most significant memory challenges for the enterprise and its users today?

• What use cases are enterprise decision makers focusing on as it pertains to consumption of memory?

• What applications and database technologies are enterprise IT decision makers focusing and how are they driving memory needs today and into the future?

• How much memory do enterprises anticipate requiring in the coming years, and can this provide a window into the growing memory and compute markets?

We welcome your comments and your feedback—this is an evolving market and opportunity that will continue to disrupt as it matures.

— The Futurum Analyst Team

PERSISTENT MEMORY Non-volatile memory that features data persistence or the ability to maintain state when not in use.

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY What is the state of persistent memory today? For this research paper, we commissioned a survey to more than 1,000 high-level decision makers that are directly responsible for the procurement, commissioning and management of datacenter technologies including and in particular memory technologies. The research focused on five major issues with a series of questions for each issue. The five issues that we intended to analyze with the data collected were User Perception, Use Cases, Applications & Consumption, Memory Selection Drivers and finally Procurement and Budgets. Futurum Research set out to not only leverage the data for direct market insights, but to also be able to identify macro trends in memory procurement. We wanted to understand the technical comprehension of current decision makers on how the proliferation of enterprise IT, workload evolution and user experience are being considered and if the decision makers are discerning between memory technologies; specifically recognition of the importance of memories that put data and compute closer together to improve application performance and real-time data availability, all while prioritizing modern security and data encryption best practices. Specifically, and within this paper, we identify the following top findings from our recent 2019 global survey and persistent memory research, issuing the associated recommendations based on our ongoing analysis of business, technology and market trends in the digital economy: ON THE TOPIC OF USER PERCEPTIONS ON MEMORY

The role of memory is evolving, and users need to keep up. User perception shows a strong understanding of the convergence between hardware, applications and data, however, a lack of importance on security, data/compute placement and the critical importance of real-time analytics sounds alarms that there is a clear knowledge gap that could hinder enterprise IT and business performance if not addressed. We recommend datacenter decision makers invest time in understanding the advantages of persistent memory over currently utilized memory technologies like DRAM and SSD.

KEY STATISTICS

65% cite data analytics as a very important use case in driving the need for persistent memory.

61% say persistent memory will be very important to their enterprise or their users within 18 to 24 months. In contrast, only 47% say the same about DRAM (a drop from 59% today).

33% strongly agree their business relies on the ability to process more data, faster.

59% agree that emerging applications are going to stress their servers and workstations.



ON THE TOPIC OF USE CASES AND NEEDS FOR MEMORY

Persistent memory will help drive value across a range of use cases. Persistent memory is clearly viewed as high priority for real-time data analytics. Support for AI, persistence of memory and overall memory utilization are also cited by our survey panel as key factors driving the need for persistent memory. Overall, our respondents current and future needs for persistent memory are diverse with Database, Servers, Storage and Operating Systems leading the way today with a shift toward Analytics and In Memory Compute in the next two years. We believe persistent memory will gain momentum as analytics, AI and multi-cloud continue to rapidly proliferate in the enterprise.

ON THE TOPIC OF APPLICATIONS AND CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

How and where memory is consumed is shifting as the need to bring memory and compute closer together increases. Memory is creating a unique challenge for today’s enterprise. Coupled with companies overall digital transformation challenges, we are seeing a clear need for specialized memory solutions that allow companies to run their applications in a modern IT environment that includes hybrid deployments, vast data sources and continuous (agile) shifts in user requirements. There is growing consensus that non-volatile or persistent memory will grow in importance while both DRAM and SSD are seeing a decline. This is an indication of enterprises becoming more cognizant of the need to put memory closer to compute, which is best realized using persistent memory technology. It is also possible that the inability of DRAM capabilities to keep pace with the growth of data and the needs of current and emerging applications is slowing the overall need and growth rates for DRAM compared to persistent memory.

ON THE TOPIC OF MEMORY SELECTION DRIVERS

Memory is moving beyond the traditional acquisition process with an increasing number of influencers driving the selection process. The primary decisions maker, while being the person that ultimately has final say, will have several key influencers including IT, service providers as well as the business unit and procurement team. However, due to the technical complexities of memory and applying the correct memory to certain applications and workloads, it is important that final procurement decisions are made by personnel that understand the business needs well and the application of certain memories and how it can enable enterprise performance.



ON THE TOPIC OF MEMORY PROCUREMENT AND BUDGETS

The need for memory is likely to increase faster than the traditional procurement process can handle. Overall indicators for memory requirements and spend seem to correlate. While some companies seem to be overly optimistic that their budget will not increase or even decrease, most companies we surveyed had a sense that their needs for memory would be substantial AND their spend would need to increase. Based upon the growing compute and data demands that most organizations are facing, we believe that companies may be underestimating their memory requirements. [This will be validated as market-sizing data for memory is published each year].

BOTTOM LINE Not all memory is created equal. Mega-trends in data-centric enterprises are converging hardware, applications and data. This is resulting in faster run-time applications that can, and must, leverage a more symbiotic relationship between memory and compute. At this point, companies are clearly starting to see the need and have identified use cases, applications and workloads that will benefit from persistent memory, however, our research indicates that we have some way to go before this is well understood and accepted by ITDM’s. There is also some reason to believe that enterprises are underestimating both their volume needs and budgetary requirements to support the investment and resources it will take to build a data- centric infrastructure that can support the proliferation of IT and software in supporting organizational transformation. While many organizations shared their perceived growth, we feel that current consumption patterns that have 49% of ITDM’s procuring memory only at the time of need, potentially fogging their view as to the true requirements that will emerge in the next five years.

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY DEMOGRAPHICS


INTRODUCING THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY Hardware, applications and data are converging, creating a tremendous need for persistent memory as an enabler of high-performance, data-centric systems.

“Memory isn’t just memory anymore. It’s not just a part of technology, it’s a driver and enabler of

technology.” Looking to the future, we believe the rapid proliferation of compute driving organizations to adopt technologies such as AI, Machine Learning, Real-Time Analytics, IoT and Edge Computing are going to require companies to be much more strategic in their procurement of memory solutions that provide the required flexibility to run critical workloads including but not limited to database and business applications. OUR RESEARCH METHODOLOGY During the 2nd quarter of 2019 we conducted a primary research study with the goal of better understanding how businesses and organizations perceive memory, its role in the development and deployment of technology hardware and software systems, and how the market is likely to evolve over the coming years. The survey consisted of 19 questions covering topics such as how memory and memory usage is viewed today, which use cases and applications are challenging existing memory usage, the key drivers leading to decisions regarding memory use and procurement, and budget and revenue considerations.

The survey was a double-blind survey, with neither the participants or Futurum Research knowing the actual identities of the other parties. Potential participants were randomly targeted from a pool of qualified individuals, and then further qualified within the survey itself, as noted in the demographics section below. OUR RESEARCH DEMOGRAPHICS Our survey panel included over a thousand panelists, spanning 20 countries across over a dozen industry sectors, representing organizations with less than a thousand to more than 50,000 employees. These respondents offered a range of perspectives on the state of memory usage and the value proposition of persistent memory. Knowledge Requirement: Survey panelists were required to have an understanding of different types of memory, such as persistent, storage-class, or non-volatile memory. While all panelists qualified, 85 percent were qualified as very familiar with this topic. Panelists were also required to have at least a basic knowledge of memory-intensive applications, such as IoT, in-memory compute, data science, virtualization, graphics design, animation, and artificial intelligence. 81 percent of our panel were further qualified as very familiar with this topic. Decision Influence Requirement: To further qualify our survey panel, we required all panelists to be actively involved in the



planning, implementation, management or oversight of memory and computer implementations and/or the applications that drive their need. We further qualified panelists by their level of involvement in decisions in the subject area. Our survey panel is comprised of three distinct decision/influence categories:

• Primary Decision Makers, having a very high level of involvement in decisions, including being the primary or sole decision maker.

• Decision Influencers, having a moderate level of involvement, influencing but not making decisions.

• Dual Influencers/Decision Makers, having a high- level of involvement in both influencing and making decisions but not being considered a Primary Decision Maker.

Management Role Requirement: Our survey targeted individuals actively involved in the ongoing management of business or technology systems, having a minimum qualification of being at the Director, Manager, or Team Lead level.

TITLE/ROLE OF PANELISTS

32 percent of panelists were members of the C-Suite and/or identified as a member of senior management (SVP, EVP, VP or Business Unit Lead), while 34 percent were at the Director, Manager, or Team Lead level. Business Size: Our survey organizations with a minimum size of 1,000 global employees. • 40% between 1,000 - 4,999 employees.

• 41% between 5,000 – 49,999 employees.

• 19% with 50,000 or more employees.

VERY HIGH,

PRIMARY DECISION

MAKER48%

HIGH LEVEL,INFLUENCING &

MAKING DECISIONS

39%

MODERATE LEVEL12%

DECISION INVOLVEMENT & INFLUENCE

CIO or other Senior IT

Management (EVP, SVP, VP)

27%

Director or Team

Leader 34%

Technical Staff 9%

Chief Product or Technology Officer

(CPO, CTO) 7%

Senior Product, Technology or

Development Lead (EVP, SVP, VP)

5%

Research & Development Lead

3%

Devops Director or

Team Leader 2%

Product Management Team Leader

3%

Software Development &

Software Services Team

3%

Cloud Services Lead

%Development

Staff 1%

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

4%

Other C-Suite or SVP/VP Executives

1%



As part of the size of business targeted, we established a primary target of organizations generating between $1b and $10b in annual revenue, although we accepted otherwise-qualified organizations beyond the bounds of this target range.

REVENUE RANGE (ANNUAL IN $USD)

Geographical Breakdown: Our survey was designed to gather opinions from business and technology leaders from around the world, with a primary target on the United States and China, with represented 28 and 23 percent respectively.

Globally, no one region represented more than a third of all organizations. Industry Breakdown: Our survey targeted a wide range of global industries known for a range of memory requirements.

> $10b18%

$5 – $9.9b28%

$1 – $4.9b 24%

$500m -$999m

17%

$100m -$499m

10%

< $100m 4%

REVENUE

NORTH AMERICA

31%

GREATER

CHINA30%

ASIAPAC15%

EMEA15%

LATAM10%



INDUSTRY BREAKDOWN

The major industries were represented as follows: • Banking & Financial Services, including capital markets,

investment banking, and insurance. • Energy & Utilities, including water, electric, oil, gas,

renewable, & nuclear; discovery, extraction, production, distribution, consumption, & disposal sectors.

• Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, including medical, medical equipment, diagnostics, professional services, R&D, and other related sectors.

• High-Tech, including computing, cloud, mobile, software, big data & analytics organizations.

• Engineering Services, including scientific, research & engineering services, CAD/CAM and 3D design services, and other engineering offerings.

• Entertainment and Media, including animation, digital content creation, media, advertising and general gaming and production studios.

Notably: • 90 percent of engineering services firms were directly

involved with CAD/CAM, 3D design or modelling products and/or services

• 94 percent of entertainment and media firms were providers of digital content creation, animation, or related products and/or services.

HIGH-TECH 21%

BANKING, FINANCIAL & INSURANCE

15%

ENERGY & UTILITIES

15%

ENGINEERING SERVICES

14%

HEALTHCARE & PHARMA

9%

ENTERTAINMENT & MEDIA

5%

INDUSTRIALS & MANUFACTURING

5%

TELECOM & COMMUNICATIONS

SERVICES4%

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

3%

PUBLIC SECTOR 3%

RETAIL, WHOLESALE & CPG

3%

TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

1% TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY

1%

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY PERCEPTIONS ON MEMORY


ISSUE ONE PERCEPTIONS ON THE VALUE OF MEMORY Memory matters a lot, and persistent memory is becoming increasingly important as it pertains to supporting key business use cases. However, many enterprises still need to make significant investments. The first step in assessing the memory market was to understand how those in the market themselves (our panelists) perceived memory and its value relative to other technologies. Specifically, and to gain a better understanding of the importance of memory to our panel, we started our survey by asking a series of questions/statements to seek the respondents’ overall level of agreement with the topic. Issues covered a broad range of topics from the proximity of data to computing resources, to enterprise reliance on faster data processing.

We approached this question seeking level of agreement, specifically whether the respondent felt strongly about the question or if they only somewhat agreed to the question. Out of the eight

29%

21%

17%

21%

33%

29%

33%

20%

31%

34%

30%

38%

31%

38%

38%

31%

Having data closer to computing resources is important as applicationsincreasingly have the ability, and the need, to consume larger amounts

of data more frequently and with faster access.

Adding more volatile memory isn’t always possible due to capacity constraints and doesn’t Always meet user/computing needs any longer.

Our computing devices can’t access enough data fast enough to keep pace with our needs (and our computer’s performance).

We know that emerging applications are going to stress our servers andworkstations.

Our business increasingly relies on our ability to process more datafaster.

Hardware-encrypted memory (with on-board keys) provides extrasecurity for mission-critical applications beyond traditional security

solutions.

Technology is converging at three different levels, hardware,applications, and data.

Our computing systems were not designed to handle the level ofanalytics and data science that has become central to performance

monitoring, analytics and insights, and operational decisionsStrongly Agree Somewhat Agree

KEY STATISTICS

71% agree that technology is converging at three different levels: Hardware, Applications, and Data. Which has us wondering what 29% of the market is thinking. Who doesn’t agree on convergence? 34% of Banking & Finance 31% of Energy & Utilities

64% believe they are increasingly reliant on their ability to process more data, faster. Who is the MOST reliant on processing more, faster? Industrial & Manufacturing (82%)

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY PERCEPTIONS ON MEMORY


questions/statements that we asked of our panel, over 47% of respondents agreed at some level to all of them. Our lowest tally came in with the aforementioned 47% agreeing at some level that their computing devices cannot access enough data fast enough to keep pace with their needs. Our panel agreed over 71% of the time to the statement, “Technology is converging at three different levels, hardware, applications and data. “ The Security Paradox Notable is the weight of importance on security, with over 67% agreeing in the importance around having hardware-encrypted memory with on-board keys to provide extra security for mission-critical applications. However, and as we’ve seen in other research, while it’s important, it may not always be that important to everyone, with only 29% in strong agreement. We believe this is a misperception on the part of the market, placing some organizations – particularly the 33% that did not agree at all – at risk. BOTTOM LINE Seeing convergence and security received as the most agreed upon topics didn’t surprise us, but what did surprise us was the low number of respondents strongly agreeing on important business initiatives like data encryption, faster access to data, and the importance of having data closer to computing resources. This immediately brought to our attention that even at high levels of IT responsibility, there is still a knowledge gap that needs to be filled for companies to be able to understand IT architecture and how various compute and memory can drastically impact database and application performance. We believe it is important to keep this early insight in mind as you continue to consume the research. This gap may be linked to enterprises underestimating their critical memory and memory type needs in the coming years, putting their IT and digital transformation efforts at risk.

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY USE CASES


ISSUE TWO USE CASES AND MEMORY NEEDS Most sectors agree on the top most important use cases. Most. Key to understanding the memory market, and specifically the importance and opportunity for persistent memory, is identifying the use cases organizations believe are driving their own needs for upgrading to faster, more persistent memory. We explored a series of 10 use cases that we believe have significant memory implications, asking panelists to rank the importance of faster, more persistent memory to each use case.

65%

63%

60%

58%

55%

53%

52%

52%

52%

48%

21%

23%

26%

27%

27%

28%

30%

31%

27%

33%

Data Analytics

Utilization of Memory (Density/Capacity/Access)

Persistence of Memory (ability to retain and access memorystate)

Real-time Insights from Data

Artificial Intelligence (cognitive or machine/deep learningapplications)

Adopting New Memory & Data Architectures (shifting SSDor DRAM to Persistent Memory)

Edge Computing Requirements (near data creation to drivefaster insights)

Shifting Overall Storage to Hybrid Storage/MemoryArchitectures

Redundancy in Memory

Automated Tiering

Very Important Somewhat Important Not Important Unsure

KEY STATISTICS

86% believe faster, persistent memory is somewhat or very important in supporting their data analytics applications and strategy. Data Analytics are most important to: 80% of Industrials & Manufacturing 72% of Healthcare & Pharma 70% of High-tech

55% believe AI is a very important use case driving memory needs. Who leads in this opinion? 66% of Industrial & Manufacturing firms. 63% of High-Tech



This question indicated a strong understanding among respondents that memory technology is important for the enterprise to execute key business use cases beyond traditional utilization and persistence of memory, but also to support current and emerging business trends such as Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Edge Computing and Hybrid IT. It was presumed on our end that the respondents would put the greatest importance on utilization and performance of memory, with emerging use cases falling in line thereafter, however, with the rapid proliferation of the data-centric organization, we weren’t surprised to see data analytics lead the way. Will the REAL Use Cases Please Stand UP In order to provide greater clarity, we further broke down the use case data to look at not just which use cases were viewed as important, but how our respondents ranked the use cases by asking the respondents to rank our 10 use cases in order of importance from 1-10. From there, we stack ranked the use cases by overall rank, scoring them by the number of respondents that ranked these use-cases in the top 10, the we looked at the rank distribution and finally gave them an overall ranking.

980 out of 1000 Ranked Artificial Intelligence as a top 10 use case driving need for

faster, more persistent memory. Interestingly enough, while data analytics may have drawn the greatest number of responses for being of high importance with regards to the need of faster, more persistent memory, AI drew the #1 in stack rank seeing the most rankings and highest overall sum of its rankings. This is potentially due to the broad and varying definitions many have for AI today. This was closely followed by persistence of memory in the second spot. We found this quite interesting because it shows that respondents clearly understood that specialized memory that can retain and access data quickly is important to achieving their business objectives.



BOTTOM LINE While all the use cases were pertinent, we found it interesting that Edge Computing and Real-Time Insights from data fell to the 7th and 8th spots when our panel was asked to rank use cases. Given the trends in these areas driving growth and the correlation between real-time data and AI, we felt both use cases had the potential to rank higher.



So which industries are hot on which use case? Taking a look at the six major industries represented in our research reveals the following when asked to RANK: Banking & Finance Use Case Ranking (Top Three) • Persistence of Memory • Artificial Intelligence • Utilization of Memory • Missing: Data Analytics, Top

choice of 59% in Very Important rating

Energy & Utilities Use Case Ranking (Top Three) • Artificial Intelligence • Persistence of Memory • Utilization of Memory < Top


Engineering Services Use Case Ranking (Top Three) • Utilization of Memory • Artificial Intelligence • Data Analytics < Top choice of

64% in Very Important rating

Entertainment & Media Use Case Ranking (Top Three) • Persistence of Memory • Artificial Intelligence • Data Analytics • Missing: Utilization of Memory,

Top choice of 65% in Very Important rating

Healthcare & Pharma Use Case Ranking (Top Three – note AI is not present) • Utilization of Memory < Top


• Data Analytics • Persistence of Memory • Missing: Artificial Intelligence not

the Top rated and not in the top three Ranked

High-Tech Use Case Ranking (Top Three) • Data Analytics • Artificial Intelligence • Utilization of Memory < Top


THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY APPLICATIONS AND NEEDS


ISSUE THREE APPLICATIONS AND NEEDS Needs are fairly established but changing over time as priorities change. Based on the responses to the use case questions, it is clear that the need for non-volatile persistent memory that keeps needed data has been established. To better understand this need and how enterprises intended to utilize this type of memory, we sought from our survey panel responses on where they saw the biggest need for non-volatile persistent memory. We provided our research panels with a predetermined set of options to cover a breadth of compute intensive enterprise workloads that notably require significant memory resources to optimize. The answers provided greater clarity on the highest priorities currently for our respondents.

Where do you currently see the biggest need for non-volatile or persistent memory?

52%

49%

47%

47%

44%

42%

42%

41%

28%

29%

30%

33%

35%

32%

32%

36%

Databases/Servers/Storage

Operating Systems

In Memory Compute

Support for Analytics

Computing Platforms

Collaboration Tools/Systems

Future-Proofing Compute Systems

Workload Distribution

Very High Need Some Need Low Need Very Low Need

KEY STATISTICS

52% feel the greatest need for non-volatile or persistent memory that keeps needed data was for Databases, Servers & Storage.

76% see Storage, Data, & Containers as a challenge for the business today. In 18 – 24 months needs will be driven by: 1 Databases, Servers & Storage 2 Support for Analytics 3 In-memory Compute 4 Computing Platforms 5 Future-proofing Compute Systems.

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY BARRIERS TO MONETIZATION


The distribution of responses for this question shed some light on how enterprise IT leaders are thinking about memory requirements. With databases leading the way at 52% ranking it of extremely high need, the last of the eight options was workload distribution coming in at 41% showing a very high need. Meaning the lowest to the highest ranged at only an 11% margin. While those that saw some need and/or high need for any of the eight optional responses ranged at the bottom 74% (tie) between Future-proofing Compute Systems and Collaboration tools. At the top of the responses was still Databases/Servers/Storage seeing 80% indicating a need, but operating systems and in-memory compute trailed closely with 78 and 77% respectively. We found it interesting that so many respondents rated operating systems highly as this area isn’t necessarily one where persistent memory is critical. We felt this was a good example of the knowledge gap with some IT administrators about memory types and the applications for persistent memory. Conclusion: The ranking of highest need is the second most important piece of data from this particular survey response. What should be noted with great interest is that all eight of the areas asked about all have a well-defined and understood need, in all cases showing a need for non-volatile, persistent memory at a rate of greater than 77%. It should also be noted that there appears to be a general sense that all applications have a very high need for persistent memory, which may indicate that the technology itself may not yet be fully understood and/or specific needs may not yet be fully evaluated or defined. ENTERPRISE APPLICATION CHALLENGES FOR MEMORY USAGE In the wake of better understanding need, we also wanted to gain better insights from our respondents on their biggest memory challenges. This included gaining a better understanding of their current challenges, as well as their expected challenges. To gain these insights, we developed a cross matrix of thirteen (13) well-understood memory-intensive enterprise applications and asked our respondents to tell us which provided the greatest level of challenge to the least challenging. For the most part, our applications are somewhat unspecific to industry; however, a few of the options including simulation, CAD/CAM, animation, and algorithmic trading had specific industry use-cases (although not always) making the distribution for those responses unique as opposed to the other nine.



The data very clearly showed that the challenges are well-distributed, but once again significant as the challenges were identified as moderate to very-high at a rate of more than 69% across all 13 applications.

Which applications are creating the most significant memory challenges for your

enterprise or your users today? The questions continued to build on a growing trend of identifying a clear need for a memory solution that can handle the enterprise workload requirements of the modern datacenter, and the data-centric organization. Seeing seven of the thirteen applications all garnering greater than 70% identifying the particular application as a challenge was telling. The distribution also raised some question about organizational transformation and the potential impact that it may have on datacenter strategy and memory selection. With 30 to 40% of the respondents seeing all of the applications as very high challenges for their enterprise today, and another 30 to 40% seeing the same as a moderate challenge, we suspect this to be closely linked with the culture and digital/IT transformation journey of respondents’ organizations, which has shown similar distributions in terms of current state of transformation according to our 2018 Digital Transformation Index.

41%40%39%38%37%37%37%36%34%34%33%31%30%

32%

33%

36%

36%

35%

36%

34%

30%

33%

34%

33%

35%

39%

Analytics (predictive, real-time, et al)Machine or Deep Learning

Storage/Data/ContainersHPC (High-performance Computing)

VirtualizationSimulation and Modeling

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)Animation and Gaming

Algorithmic TradingCaching & Persistence…

Financial ProcessingDistributed Ledger Processing

CAD/CAM DesignVery High Challenge Moderate Challenge Low Challenge Very Low Challenge

OBSERVATION Top Three selection order in 3 – 5 years: 1 Analytics (predictive, real-time, et al) 2 Simulation and Modeling 3 HPC (High-performance Computing) 4 CAD/CAM Design 5 Animation and Gaming 6 Machine or Deep Learning 7 Financial Processing 8 Virtualization 9 Storage/Data/Containers 10 Distributed Ledger Processing 11 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) 12 Algorithmic Trading 13 Caching & Persistence



Conclusion: Memory is creating a unique challenge for today’s enterprise. Coupled with companies’ overall digital transformation challenges, we are seeing a clear need for specialized memory solutions that allow companies to run their applications in a modern IT environment that includes hybrid deployments, vast data sources, and continuous (agile) shifts in user requirements. MEMORY TYPES AND NEEDS – NOW AND IN THE FUTURE In order to better identify trends as it relates to memory consumption and shifting needs that are developing in the enterprise, it was important to track the types of memory being consumed today along with the types our respondents anticipate needing to use in the future. To do so, we sought responses on the current adoption of three (3) of the most common memory types, including DRAM, SSD, and Persistent Memory.

Please estimate the current importance of each type of memory used in your

enterprise or by your users today and in 18 months. At the current time, it appears that our respondents see the three memory types as somewhat equal and interchangeable, with all three ranking similarly when it comes to importance with DRAM, SSD, and Persistent Memory at 78%, 76% and 77% respectively. When asking about 18-24 months into

59% 47% 59% 56% 59% 61%

29%43%

27% 34% 28% 32%

TODAY 18-24MONTHS

TODAY 18-24MONTHS

TODAY 18-24MONTHS

DRAM SSD PERSISTENTMEMORY

Very Important Somewhat Important Not Important



the future, we saw an interesting trend where only persistent memory saw an increase in high importance, while both DRAM and SSD saw a decrease in high importance. This suggests that this type of memory is trending negatively for critical workloads, while persistent memory is seeing an uptick.

61% felt that persistent memory will be very important to their organization over the next 18-24 months.

To further investigate this finding, we also inquired on the memory needs of our respondents, asking them to provide their estimated memory needs for each of the three types of memory, barring cost as a factor. We specifically asked the question in this way because we wanted to understand preference in an uninhibited environment, and we know companies cannot always procure their preferred product or solutions due to constraints. Similar to the memory type question, we also asked this question on a current and near future horizon.

Please estimate how much more memory would be needed or utilized today and in

18 – 24 months if cost were not a factor.

TODAY18-24

MONTHS TODAY18-24

MONTHS TODAY18-24

MONTHS

DRAM SSD PERSISTENTMEMORY

None (we don't need any more memory) 6% 5% 4% 4% 4% 4%<5% more 12% 11% 9% 11% 9% 9%

5% - 10% more 23% 21% 20% 17% 17% 17%11% - 20% more 22% 21% 21% 21% 20% 19%21% - 33% more 15% 16% 19% 16% 19% 18%

34% - 50% more 11% 14% 15% 16% 16% 17%51% - 66% more 7% 8% 9% 9% 10% 10%> 66% more 4% 5% 4% 6% 5% 6%

4% 5% 4% 6% 5% 6%7% 8% 9% 9% 10% 10%11%

14% 15% 16% 16% 17%15%

16%19% 16% 19% 18%

22%21%

21% 21%20% 19%

23%21%

20% 17% 17% 17%

12% 11% 9% 11% 9% 9%6% 5% 4% 4% 4% 4%



The responses to this question showed new requirements for all the memory types, both now and in the future. The majority of companies fell into one of four categories, placing their needs as low as 5% and as high as 50% more memory required now and over the next two years. This raises some questions about enterprise plans to evolve their datacenter strategies to support modern IT infrastructure, but we also believe that many respondents may have placed slight bias toward current workloads even when considering the future. This has become common due to rate of change and difficulty for ITDM and other decision influencers to know with any level of certainty what their needs will be over an extended period of time.

A hypothesis for slower growth rates could be connected to cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) adoption, where consumption models do not require direct procurement of memory, lowering the expectation for spend related to memory solutions.

We expected to potentially see some breakout growth numbers as to memory needs over the next two years, but organizations at this point are showing caution in their projections for significant growth. Persistent memory led the three categories for companies looking to expand their memory needs by more than 50% with 16% of companies saying they would do so with persistent memory. Conclusion: There is growing consensus that non-volatile or persistent memory will grow in importance while both DRAM and SSD are seeing a decline. This is an indication of enterprises becoming more cognizant of the need to put memory closer to compute, which is best realized using persistent memory technology. The need for memory appears to be less clear to enterprises as possible workload placement and difficulty in predicting their future needs

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY SELECTION DRIVERS


ISSUE FOUR SELECTION DRIVERS Everybody is concerned about data security, but faster access to data, network/communications performance, leading technology, and cost/compute resources are the go-to drivers in memory selection today. In this section, we explore the drivers in selection of memory solutions. This includes the specific personnel with a look at partnerships and service providers that may be influencing consumption and procurement. Then we will turn to selection drivers in terms of “Why” companies are investing in memory solutions, and then turn to specific drivers cutting across operating systems, databases, and applications.

31% of the time, enterprise IT owns the responsibility for specifying and selecting memory technologies.

MEMORY OWNERSHIP When looking at the “Primary” influencer in terms of memory technology selection, IT still held the largest share, but by no means did they drive the majority of purchasing. The panel provided clear indications that there are numerous main drivers that can exist outside of the organization or technical staff that do not sit within the IT department. Over 63% of the time, the final decision was made by someone within the organization, however, the remaining 37% of the time, the decision was driven from outside. Conclusion: We believe in most cases, the primary decisions-maker while being the person that has the ultimate say, will have several key influencers including IT,

KEY STATISTICS

37% of the time, strategic memory decisions are made by a person or group outside of a company.

52% see faster access to data as critically important to memory selection.

Technical Staff 16% Procurement

Team 16%

Workstation Provider

16%

IT Department 31%

OEM Provider 9%

Cloud Service Provider

12%

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY ETHICS, SECURITY and DATA PRIVACY


service providers, as well as the business unit and procurement team. However, due to the technical complexities of memory and applying the correct memory to certain applications and workloads, it is important that final procurement decisions are made by personnel that understand the business needs well and understand how the application of certain memories can enable enterprise performance. MEMORY SELECTION DRIVERS Memory decisions are also closely tied to business outcomes and key performance metrics being tracked both by the business and by IT. To better understand the selection process, we sought to understand which outcomes and performance-related activities were seen as critical to the business and then, which were marked as very important and only somewhat. We framed the question in a matrix to provide respondents the ability to stack rank by priority and then level of importance.

Please estimate the importance of the following in the selection of memory solutions.

With 31% of respondents choosing Security, it immediately rose to the top when asking which outcomes were most critical to the business. Data Protection followed closely behind at 30%, making Security and Privacy a standout performer on this question. Immediately after Security, we saw

OBSERVATION

Top Three selection order (note how Security-related drivers drop in the Top Three):

52% Faster access to data (high-speed storage)

45% Improved network/communications performance

32% Leading-edge technology

31% Improved cost/compute resource

25% Lower cost per gigabyte

24% Greater memory density

21% Faster recovery to operational state (i.e., resilience)

> 20% (#2) Improved data protection/security

> 8% (#1) Data Security/Encryption

8% Reduced power consumption/heat

5% Integration, Recommendation within other systems



Speed, with Faster Access to Data and Faster Recovery (resilience) falling in the third and fourth spots respectively. We found it interesting that Cost per GB and Improved Cost/Compute Resource were seen as critical at a much lower rate, 15% and 21% respectively, and ranking overall at 10/10 and 8/10 choices. This suggests that the businesses understand the value of memory and have greater elasticity to pricing if a certain memory type can assure greater performance, especially in the areas ranked highest as mentioned above. FOCUS AREAS DRIVING CONSUMPTION OF MEMORY Turning attention to specific workloads, we next sought more granular data on the memory selection drivers by looking at how much focus over the next 12-18 months that enterprises planned to put on 12 Big Data analytics tools, 24 databases, 11 operating systems, and 5 OSS/Hypervisors. Please estimate the level of focus you anticipate over the coming 12 – 18 months for the following Big Data analytics tools:

Data is only as valuable as the insights it can yield. When it comes to big data analytics tools, Apache Spark, Analytics Zoo, and Apache Hadoop are the tools with the most significant focus anticipated

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Apache Spark (GraphX, Streaming,…

Analytics Zoo (BigDL, TF, Keras,…

Apache Hadoop

Cloudera Spark

Hisign (Fingerprint Identification)

Databricks Spark

Apache Kafka

Apache Spark SQL

Apache Flink

Alluxio

KX Systems

Baosight

SIGNIFICANT Focus(critical to success)

MODERATE Focus(important, but not critical)

SLIGHT Focus(interested, but not a priority)

ESTIMATED FOCUS ANTICIPATED THROUGH 4Q 2020 FOR BIG DATA ANALYTICS TOOLS

NOTE: Data not shown for "Unsure/Not a Focus"



over the coming 12 0- 18 months. But the relative lack of variation between all of the listed tools is telling – analytics is a consistently strong focus with a wide range of options and no break-out tool. Please estimate the level of focus you anticipate over the coming 12 – 18 months for the following databases:

Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, and Apache HBase were the top three databases according to our respondents. However, when looking closely at the data, you will notice that the distribution of responses was spread out somewhat evenly across the top 10. This indicates that database selection is wide, and while there are clear leaders, there are a vast number of competitors and database offerings that are being utilized across the enterprise.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Microsoft SQL Server

IBM DB2

Apache HBase

SAP HANA

Redis Labs on Flash

Apache HBase WAL-les

PerconaDB(MySQL)/InnoDB

Altibase

RedisLabs Enterprise

Datastax Cassandra




ESTIMATED FOCUS ANTICIPATED THROUGH 4Q 2020 FOR DATABASES (TOP 10)




Please estimate the level of focus you anticipate over the coming 12 – 18 months for the following OSS (operating systems):

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Redis (open source)Gbase

Aerospike Enterprise EditionSunJe Soft

MongoDB/WiredTigerPerconaDB(MySQL)/MyRocks

KIngbaseInnoDB

memcacheDAsiaInfo ADB

Hazelcast IMDGApache Cassandra

Cloudera Apache HBaseRocksDB




ESTIMATED FOCUS ANTICIPATED THROUGH 4Q 2020 FOR DATABASES (11-24)


0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

Windows Server 2019

Windows (Overall)

Windows Server 2016

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Windows PE

Ubuntu

FreeBSD

CentOS

Fedora

SUSE SLE12, SLE15




ESTIMATED FOCUS ANTICIPATED THROUGH 4Q 2020 FOR OSS




Not surprisingly, Windows dominated focus for operating systems, with five of the top six ratings—a nod to the strong market position Microsoft has cultivated over the years. Please estimate the level of focus you anticipate over the coming 12 – 18 months for the following OSS/Hypervisors:

Compared to pure OSS products, OSS/Hypervisors are consistently rated slightly lower in the significant focus category, but within the same general focus level as the second-tier OSS products.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

VMware ESXi

Windows Hyper-V

Linux KVM

Citrix Xen

Virtuozzo




ESTIMATED FOCUS ANTICIPATED THROUGH 4Q 2020 FOR OSS/HYPERVISORS


THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY PROCUREMENT AND BUDGETS


ISSUE FIVE PROCUREMENT AND BUDGETS Buying less may save now, but it won’t tomorrow. Cost savings over time will be consumed by new needs. The last issue we tackled in this survey was to gain insights as to enterprise spend and appetite for future investment in memory technology. With the research showing clear understanding of the value and importance of memory technology on business performance and continuity, we felt it important to also see what spending patterns will look like. For instance, when do enterprises typically procure their memory? Do they do it in advance, or do they wait until the last minute? This particular question provided an interesting result. MEMORY NEEDS AND WHEN IT IS PROCURED

49% acquire only the memory they need now and wait until they are near capacity before procuring additional required memory.

As it comes to the procurement of memory, we wanted to gain a better understanding of organizational plans to procure memory regardless of type or price. This was to get a handle on expected demand, and timing for the demand. The panelists provided us a comprehensive look into the next 5 years, but broke down their responses by 1-2 years, 3-5 years, and beyond 5 years.

KEY STATISTICS

49% only acquire the memory they need now and wait until they are near capacity before procuring additional required memory.

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY TECHNOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP


How much more memory (overall, regardless of type or cost) do you anticipate

needing for your enterprise or your users over the coming years compared to today? In other words, our memory needs will expand by…

Above we mentioned the 49% who responded they only acquire in real-time, and this seemed to be somewhat indicated as we analyzed the data. While database and compute growth would clearly imply a need for increasing memory resources, organizations were inconsistent when predicting future memory requirements. For instance, companies that felt they had significant demand (50% or more) seemed to clearly be able to mark their growing needs. However, companies that were anticipating growth of 33% or less showed a declining requirement or a belief that a more immediate purchase would potentially abdicate the company from future memory purchases. This is highly unlikely, but clearly validates the real-time buying approach.

5%

20%

31%

21%

14%

8%

1%

4%

19%

24% 24%

19%

9%

1%3%

16%

19%21%

23%

16%

3%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

0% (no change) Up to 10% more Up to 20% more Up to 33% more Up to 50% more Over 50% more Unsure (we reallydon't know whatwe're going to be

doing)

Within 1 - 2 years (compared to today) Within 3 - 5 years (compared to today) Beyond 5 years (compared to today)



Insight: The requirement for memory will continue to rise as computing capabilities increase, data growth continues to be exponential and the demand for high-performing applications expands. We find it highly unlikely that more than 59% of organizations will only see a 33% growth in memory requirement over the next 5 years.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MEMORY BUDGETS AND ANTICIPATED SPEND Investment in memory technology to support the data-centric organization will be critical to businesses executing IT modernization and transformation, but what are enterprise users expecting to be spending on memory over the next five years? We asked our respondents to give us a look into their purchasing and budget plans over the next 1-2 years, 3-5 years, and beyond five years to see how much these companies planned to increase their budgets. They were asked to compare their spend to today’s spend.

Note: With compute and memory technologies being a highly competitive market with regular exponential gains in capability while cost tends to stay steady or decrease, companies need to take into consideration that budget and memory volume are going to be independent based on price volatility. Companies could procure 50% more memory but only incur a 10% increase in cost if certain memory types and volumes see correlating price adjustments downward.

Overall, in all three evaluated time periods from the shortest horizon of 1-2 years to the longest, beyond five years, memory investment was trending toward growth in most companies. However, during the near term of 1-2 years, we are seeing a number of companies planning to reduce spend on memory technologies. During this horizon, more than 25% of companies planned to reduce spend by 10% or more, while another 12% planned to stay flat. These lighter-spending organizations show signs of loosening the purse strings after the three-year mark, with those declining budgets dropping to 20% with only 8% staying flat, and then they fall further to 18% and 7% beyond five years.



How much more do you expect you or your users will budget/spend for memory (overall, regardless of type or cost) over the coming years compared to today? In

other words, our memory spend compared to today will expand by… Meanwhile, at the top of the growth curve there are strong indications of significant increased spending by many enterprises, both in the short term and the more distant time lines. The data presents a positive indication that the growth will trend upwards as companies look to procure larger memory volumes. This correlates well with the relatively high level of enterprise focus on memory-intensive applications over the coming 12-18 months, including applications such as Big Data analytics tools that would benefit from persistent memory – See chart on Page 25. Even in the short term, 25% of enterprises expect to increase budgets by one-third or more. In 3-5 years’ time, this increases significantly to 35%, and grows even further after to five years to 42%. Conclusion: Overall indicators for memory requirements and spend seem to correlate. While some companies seem to be overly optimistic that their budget will not increase or even decrease, most companies we surveyed had a sense that their needs for memory would be substantial AND their spend would need to increase. Based upon the growing compute and data demands that most organizations are facing, we believe that companies are likely underestimating their memory requirements. [This will be validated as market-sizing data for memory is published each year].

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Within 1 - 2 years (compared to today) Within 3 - 5 years (compared to today) Beyond 5 years (compared to today)

Over 20% LESS spend (we'recutting budget a lot)

Up to 10% LESS spend (we'recutting budget a bit)

0% (no change)

Up to 10% more

Up to 20% more

Up to 33% more

Up to 50% more

Over 50% more

Unsure (we really don't knowwhat we're going to be doing)

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY CONCLUSION


CONCLUSION SUMMARY INSIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The technology of memory is changing, as is its role. Enterprises need to keep pace with these changes in order to optimize and leverage the benefits persistent memory can offer today and in the future. Based on our research, we offer the following key insights. INSIGHT ON THE ROLE OF MEMORY

Enterprises must understand the changing role of memory from a strategic perspective. Memory isn’t just memory anymore. It’s not just a part of technology, it’s a driver and enabler of technology. While we see clear connections and support in our research data for the idea that hardware, applications, and data are converging, we are also not convinced that this is accepted, and incorporated, widely enough.

INSIGHT ON THE NEED FOR MEMORY

Enterprises must leverage the convergence of hardware, applications, and data to drive new value. The technological trends that are reshaping the digital landscape are not small and are not ending any time soon. From artificial intelligence to edge computing, the value enterprises derive from technology is increasingly “integrated.” When, where, and the type of memory needed is changing, and becoming more of a driver of technology than a support of technology.

INSIGHT ON APPLICATIONS AND CONSUMPTION OF MEMORY

Enterprises must look for competitive opportunities that persistent memory can enable, not just existing use cases, but new as well. When we evaluate the use cases driving memory

today, we see a fairly predictable field. Most industries, across different geographies, are focused on similar use cases. The value in persistent memory isn’t to be found in satisfying those use cases alone but in leveraging persistent memory, and the ability to bring data, compute, and memory closer together to fund new use cases that provide an operational or customer-facing competitive edge.

INSIGHT ON MEMORY DRIVERS AND SELECTION

Enterprises need to re-think the way memory is valued as a part of larger, system-wide initiatives. Like many evolving technologies today, what many anticipated a decade ago – the status quo – has been forever lost in a wave of digital transformation and digital integration, as memory technology is now a core part of emerging value, and not just a compute resource. Our research is clear, the main selection drivers for memory are no longer performance but features that enable the creation of trust in the digital system. Data security, encryption, and data protection are now key drivers and must be party of a broad-based strategy. But ownership of memory decisions is fairly distributed, with close to a third of enterprises leaving memory decisions to others (and limiting the value emerging features can offer.)

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY CONCLUSION


INSIGHT ON BUDGETS AND PROCUREMENT

Enterprises must recognize that memory is not the traditional commodity it has been defined as the past decade. Enterprises no longer have the luxury of deferring purchase decisions until the next year, let alone the next quarter. As memory technology has evolved, so, too, have the applications and consumer demands that drive all market opportunities in the end. Today, 49% of enterprises procure only as much memory as they need today, waiting until needs force additional acquisitions. We live in a volatile world, where supply chains and changing regulatory or consumer demands can disrupt almost any industry at any time. Planning for that as it relates to memory procurement, or anything else, should be a consideration. It is significant to note here that our data also showed that organizations plan on using more over the near and long-term future than they do today.

Based on our research, we offer the following predictions on the future of persistent memory: PREDICTION WORKLOADS WILL DRIVE INCREASED DEMAND FOR PERSISTENT MEMORY

The development of data and compute-intensive applications like Big Data analytics and AI that require faster access to data and compute resources will drive steady demand for persistent memory resources. The ability to provide embedded security, data protection, and faster state recovery will further improve the functionality and performance of these applications, enabling broad and distributed deployment at the edge.

PREDICTION BUDGETS FOR MEMORY SPEND WILL INCREASE

Not all memory is created equal and, while certain memory types are benefiting from commodity pricing, the value-add of persistent memory solutions will result in additional component spend and significant improvement in application performance and functionality. This may prove to be an operational challenge (or limiting factor) for the 20% of organizations looking to decrease memory spend over the coming one to two years.

PREDICTION PERSISTENT MEMORY WILL BECOME OCTANE TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE APPS

The ability to maintain state in persistent memory will result in a rethinking of how apps are developed and the features they can offer. From analytical tools to AI to storage and memory optimization, persistent memory will become an enabler of high-performance applications that feature greater distributed compute, data, and storage capabilities.

THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY APPENDIX


ABOUT INTEL Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), a leader in the semiconductor industry, is shaping the data-centric future with computing and communications technology that is the foundation of the world’s innovations. The company’s engineering expertise is helping address the world’s greatest challenges as well as helping secure, power and connect billions of devices and the infrastructure of the smart, connected world – from the cloud to the network to the edge and everything in between. For more information, visit INTEL on the web. ABOUT FUTURUM RESEARCH Futurum is an independent research, analysis, and advisory firm, focused on digital innovation and market-disrupting technologies and trends. Every day, our analysts, researchers, and advisors help business leaders from around the world anticipate tectonic shifts in their industries and leverage disruptive innovation to either gain or maintain a competitive advantage in their markets.

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THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY APPENDIX


IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PAPER CONTRIBUTOR: Daniel Newman, Principal Analyst, Futurum Research PUBLISHER: Daniel Newman, Founder & Principal Analyst at Futurum Research INQUIRIES: Contact us if you would like to discuss this report and Futurum Research will respond promptly. CITATIONS: This paper can be cited by accredited press and analysts, but must be cited in-context, displaying author’s name, author’s title, and “Futurum Research.” Non-press and non-analysts must receive prior written permission by Futurum Research. LICENSING: This document, including any supporting materials, is owned by Futurum Research. This publication may not be reproduced, distributed, or shared in any form without the prior written permission of Futurum Research. DISCLOSURES: This paper was commissioned by Intel. Futurum Research provides research, analysis, advising, and consulting to many high-tech companies, including those mentioned in this paper. No employees at the firm hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this document.

DISCLAIMER: The information presented in this document is for informational purposes only and may contain technical inaccuracies, omissions, and typographical errors. Futurum Research disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in such information. This document consists of the opinions of Futurum Research and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Futurum Research provides forecasts and forward-looking statements as directional indicators and not as precise predictions of future events. While our forecasts and forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forecasts and forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of publication for this document. Please keep in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forecasts and forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.

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THE STATE OF PERSISTENT MEMORY - Futurum Research · Persistent memory will help drive value across a range of use cases. Persistent memory is clearly viewed as high priority for