6. Servers For Storage

Server sales in 2016 also took a hit, but demand by hyperscale data centers could bring growth back to the industry in 2017. However, whether total server sales continue to grow or fall, more and more of those servers will be targeted at storage solutions in 2017. This may be from an increase in the sales of software-defined storage, or the increased use of flash storage in servers to directly run applications, or in technology to share flash between multiple servers. Or all three.

But the key takeaway for 2017 is that servers will be increasingly used in place of, and not on top of, storage.