What are the biggest storage challenges facing businesses, and how can they be fixed?

If your business is contending with increasing complexity in storage infrastructure, you're not alone.

Indeed, this was the topic of a recent Omdia whitepaper published on behalf of Dell Technologies, which found that 68% of IT leaders identified complexity as a top challenge.

But complexity takes many forms, and there are key contributing factors.

These can vary based on organizational size, expertise, and capabilities, but there are several recurring pain points that IT leaders have in common.

So what can IT leaders expect to learn with this whitepaper, and what are the key questions you should be asking?

What are the key causes of storage complexity?

First and foremost, legacy systems in need of modernization place a huge strain on organizations and simply can't keep pace with current demands.

With AI-driven workloads, surging data growth, and the need for real-time performance capabilities, this puts legacy systems at a huge disadvantage.

How do legacy systems impact operations?

Legacy systems lack the "speed, efficiency, scalability, and integrations" required to meet modern IT demands.

But that's not all. These environments are often fragmented, forcing users to traverse disparate systems, which only adds to both complexity and strain.

By consolidating these fragmented systems into a single, streamlined architecture, enterprises can develop infrastructure that not only meets modern demands, but also proves more cost-efficient and flexible.

How does storage performance impact enterprises?

Outdated storage solutions lack the raw power required to contend with cumbersome AI workloads and growing data volumes.

This creates critical bottlenecks within IT environments, which has an impact on both operational efficiency and application performance.

How can I tackle storage complexity?

Fragmented storage environments naturally contribute to complexity. Omdia describes these as "isolated islands lacking optimal integration with servers, the network, the virtualization/container layer, and the cloud".

Put simply, these disparate "islands" lack interoperability, meaning that the first step in tackling storage complexity is consolidation. Creating a singular, streamlined environment is vital and enables enterprises to cross that first critical hurdle.

How can Dell PowerStore help?

With Dell PowerStore, enterprises can consolidate their storage infrastructure within one easy-to-use platform. This solution forms a key component of the Dell Private Cloud and offers users a range of tools and features aimed at streamlining and automating processes. This significantly helps reduce manual toil and simplify storage operations.

Dell PowerStore offers the performance capabilities required to contend with modern IT workloads. It is also highly flexible, allowing enterprises to scale based on changing requirements.

To learn more about how you can tackle storage complexity with Dell PowerStore, download the full whitepaper, 'Storage Is Breaking Under Modern IT Demands: How Dell PowerStore Delivers the Fix.'

What are the biggest storage challenges facing businesses, and how can they be fixed?
This Omdia White Paper was commissioned by Dell Technologies and is distributed under license from TechTarget, Inc. # Storage Is Breaking Under Modern IT Demands: How Dell PowerStore Delivers the Fix Authors: Simon Robinson, Principal Analyst and Monya Keane, Senior Research Analyst July 2026 # Executive summary IT complexity is rising fast, and storage is where it hits hardest: 68% of IT leaders named storage infrastructure as a top challenge, and legacy systems can't keep pace with AI-driven workloads, data growth, or the demand for real-time performance.1 Building for intelligence starts with the data foundation, and that foundation starts with storage that can eliminate bottlenecks, simplify operations through built-in intelligence, and modernize without disruption. Dell PowerStore solves this with a unified, end-to-end NVMe-based platform that delivers enterprise performance, efficiency, and resiliency without compromise so that IT teams can modernize their data foundation without downtime or costly re-platforming. This paper explains why storage modernization has become a strategic imperative and how PowerStore, as the data foundation for Dell Private Cloud, helps organizations turn storage from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage. As organizations prepare infrastructure for AI and ever-changing workload demands, storage cannot be modernized in isolation. PowerStore serves as a critical part of a broader modern infrastructure strategy, helping IT teams simplify operations, improve efficiency, strengthen resilience, and stay flexible as private cloud and hypervisor requirements evolve. *** 1 Source: Enterprise Strategy Group (now Omdia) Complete Survey Results, *The Critical Role of Storage in Building an Enterprise AI Infrastructure*, September 2025. This Omdia White Paper was commissioned by Dell Technologies and is distributed under license from TechTarget, Inc. ## Contents | Executive summary ………………………………………………………………………………………….. | 2 | | —- | —- | | Eliminate bottlenecks with a modern data foundation……………………………………………… | 4 | | Enterprise storage has always been the secret weapon ………………………………………… | 5 | | Moving to a zero-compromise storage platform with Dell PowerStore …………………………. | 6 | | Future-ready architecture engineered for tomorrow's demands ……………………………… | 7 | | Maximize efficiency with built-in intelligence………………………………………………………. | 8 | | Redefining ease of use to recoup time ………………………………………………………………. | 9 | | PowerStore plus Dell Private Cloud…………………………………………………………………… | 9 | | How PowerStore addresses real-world challenges ……………………………………………… | 10 | | Cost concerns …………………………………………………………………………………………. | 10 | | Availability concerns …………………………………………………………………………………. | 10 | | Security concerns …………………………………………………………………………………….. | 10 | | Flexibility concerns …………………………………………………………………………………… | 10 | | Diverse workload growth ……………………………………………………………………………. | 11 | | Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. | 12 | # Eliminate bottlenecks with a modern data foundation Change is constant in IT, but as its pace accelerates and demands accumulate, the underlying IT infrastructure struggles to keep pace. Enterprise Strategy Group (now Omdia) research shows that overall IT complexity is increasing at six in ten organizations, with one in five describing the complexity growth as substantial.² That growing complexity has significant real-world impacts: 69% of IT leaders said it slows operations and initiatives. From their perspective, a major pain point is clear—a combined 68% identified storage infrastructure as a challenge for their IT organization.³ That challenge is only intensifying as AI moves from pilot to production. Storage performance and data access are now bigger bottlenecks than raw compute capacity for many organizations running AI and analytics workloads. When storage can't keep up, sluggish performance delays critical decisions, IT teams get buried in time-consuming maintenance, and innovation takes a back seat. Exploding data growth, accelerated by AI initiatives, demands ever-increasing space, power, and cooling, pushing already-strained storage systems past their limits. Organizations face a range of issues (see **Figure 1**)⁴ that prevent their storage environment from supporting business success—from integration gaps to slow provisioning and inconsistent performance. _________________ ² Source: Enterprise Strategy Group (now Omdia) Research Report, *2025 Technology Spending Intentions Survey*, December 2024. ³ Source: Enterprise Strategy Group (now Omdia) Complete Survey Results, *The Critical Role of Storage in Building an Enterprise AI Infrastructure*, September 2025. ⁴ Ibid. Figure 1: Top five challenges with on-premises storage **Which of the following, if any, are your organization's top system-related challenges with on-premises block storage? (Percent of respondents, N=343, three responses accepted)** | Challenge | Percent of respondents | | —- | —- | | Integration with broader IT management and automation platforms and tools | 35 | | Performance (e.g., latency and bandwidth of accessing data on the system) | 27 | | Performance of data services (i.e., speed of snapshots, replication, clones, etc.) | 23 | | System-level security | 22 | | Time and effort required to provision capacity for IT services consumers | 22 | Source: Omdia The fragmented nature of legacy storage is at the heart of the problem. Legacy storage lacks the speed, efficiency, scalability, and integrations needed to meet modern IT demands, and organizations that delay modernizing this foundational layer risk falling further behind in a fast-changing, data-driven world. To succeed, IT organizations must prioritize storage modernization and consolidation. By shifting to disaggregated architectures and a modern storage platform, IT leaders can transform infrastructure into a flexible, cost-effective engine that drives business innovation and meets both today's and tomorrow's demands. ## Enterprise storage has always been the secret weapon Building a storage environment to meet the diverse and ever-changing requirements of modern workloads requires a different approach. Historically, storage was treated almost as an afterthought, typically deployed to support a specific workload. Over time, those environments became patchworks of underutilized silos, each requiring specialists' skills and time to manage. Today, that approach is insufficient. Instead of relying on piecemeal solutions, IT leaders should choose options that operate as a platform-centric, strategic data layer. The ideal solution should support a wide range of workloads with superior levels of performance and availability while offering high degrees of flexibility to meet current and future requirements. ### Look for the following in a solution: * **Performance, scale, and flexibility.** Modern applications are demanding, varied, and growing. To address this reality, organizations should consider moving to a more future-proof storage foundation that can support workloads across file/block, virtualized, and container-based data. * **Efficiency across multiple dimensions.** With IT budgets under pressure, maximizing the value of every dollar spent on infrastructure is critical. This not only includes hardware costs but also expenses for power, real estate, and management overhead. While trade-offs were once the price of efficiency, organizations should demand modern platforms deliver performance, scale, and efficiency without compromise. * **Integration and intelligence.** Storage has long been regarded as a somewhat complex component of an IT infrastructure to manage. IT leaders remain frustrated with manually intensive provisioning and ongoing management. Modern storage platforms address this with AI-driven automation and seamless integration across the stack, transforming IT infrastructure from disconnected components into a streamlined, cohesive engine that can adapt rapidly to changing business initiatives. Legacy storage environments are isolated islands lacking optimal integration with servers, the network, the virtualization/container layer, and the cloud. Often, they are also detached from the toolsets that organizations use to manage broader workloads and service levels. Such storage environments must be constantly, manually, separately manipulated to remain in an optimal state within the IT stack. That lack of integration and automation compounds complexity, consumes human capital, and increases risk. # Moving to a zero-compromise storage platform with Dell PowerStore By moving to a solution such as Dell PowerStore, organizations can position themselves to handle the challenges of today and tomorrow without compromise. PowerStore delivers everything modern IT environments demand—performance, resiliency, flexibility, and efficiency—all built on an intelligent, highly automated foundation that transforms how organizations build private clouds. PowerStore has a differentiated architecture and broad and deep capabilities. It is the foundation for Dell Private Cloud, at the forefront of Dell's efforts to deliver a flexible, efficient, simple private cloud experience to organizations. # Future-ready architecture engineered for tomorrow's demands Even though many arrays struggle to keep pace with the demands of modern IT, PowerStore's core design principle is that organizations should never outgrow their storage. PowerStore is built on a high-performance, unified, end-to-end non-volatile memory express (NVMe) architecture that supports all workloads from a single appliance. What differentiates PowerStore from other solutions in the market are these key attributes: * **Flexible configurations.** Flexible configurations empower organizations to adapt quickly to changing demands. PowerStore can scale up capacity in granular, single-drive increments to minimize costs. It supports scale-out clustering (to 23.24PBe of capacity across a four-appliance cluster) for diverse workloads that can be managed through a single interface—block, file, containers, and bare metal—using any combination of models to meet varied performance requirements while optimizing for cost. It also offers intelligent load balancing to optimize performance across the cluster. * **Rock-solid resiliency and policy-based protection.** This enables organizations to recover quickly from disruptions or data loss and includes secure, immutable snapshots and synchronous/asynchronous replication. Metro-sync support with auto failover allows workloads to stay online, even during an outage. Organizations can enable these replication features for any workload, across any networking technology, for any RPO/RTO requirement. * **Federal-grade security.** With enterprise data coming under attack from AI-accelerated threats, security at the storage level is vital. PowerStore protects an organization's most critical data by accelerating zero-trust strategies with capabilities such as hardware root of trust, multi-factor authentication, encryption, and more. STIG-hardened, PowerStore is designed to meet the toughest compliance standards. Additionally, new multi-party authorization features enhance security by adding an extra layer of protection for key actions, such as deleting volumes/snapshots and modifying key configurations. * **Lifecycle Extension with ProSupport.** This leverages PowerStore's modular hardware design and all-inclusive software to put modernization on autopilot. This approach eliminates the painful, disruptive migrations of legacy storage, replacing them with an always-modern experience that ensures workloads run on the latest technology at the lowest cost. By combining seamless technology upgrades, cost-saving capacity discounts, dedicated technical advisors, and more, Lifecycle Extension makes PowerStore a truly future-proof platform—one that Dell envisions as "the last storage system its customers will ever need to buy." ## Maximize efficiency with built-in intelligence PowerStore tackles rising costs and volatility with efficiency that saves money, improves total cost of ownership, and **keeps costs predictable even amid market uncertainty**. Key elements of its architecture include: * **Up to 3x greater performance and density.** PowerStore delivers substantially more performance and density in a compact footprint, enabling significant consolidation and a leaner, more efficient data center, exactly the kind of platform consolidation ITDMs are prioritizing as they work to reduce infrastructure sprawl. * **A no-compromise QLC design.** Quad-level cell, or QLC, storage offers a lower cost per gigabyte, and PowerStore's architecture captures that cost benefit without trading off performance, reliability, or latency. Combined with Dell's 6:1 data reduction guarantee, this enables up to 5.8 PBe of capacity in a 3U system, driving greater density along with meaningful power and space savings. * **AI-powered simplicity.** Built-in automation reduces storage effort by up to 95% according to Dell, freeing staff from routine tuning, provisioning, and maintenance tasks so they can spend their time on strategic priorities instead of keeping the lights on. * **Dynamic Node Affinity.** This capability auto-tunes performance by dynamically switching host paths between controllers, distributing paths among volumes automatically, and reassigning them as workload demands shift, so performance stays consistent without manual intervention. * **Dynamic Resiliency Engine.** This extends simplicity to redundancy, eliminating the need to manage RAID groups. Drives can be added one at a time, and drive sizes can be mixed, giving IT teams more flexibility as they scale. * **Advanced data reduction.** Smart hardware and software combine to deliver predictable efficiency with zero impact on workloads. Data reduction runs continuously and requires no manual configuration, which supports Dell's 6:1 data reduction guarantee on reducible data, included with every new purchase of a Gen 3 system with no signature or assessment required. * **Software-driven innovation.** PowerStore gets faster and more efficient through ongoing software updates. A new metadata acceleration feature boosts read-intensive workload performance through advanced memory optimization, reducing CPU overhead and delivering up to 80% better read performance and up to 30% better performance for mixed workloads, according to Dell. Intelligent Compression increases data reduction by 20% and achieves up to 28% overall improved data density, according to Dell. ## Redefining ease of use to recoup time For IT organizations, a major challenge is how to manage an increasingly demanding, diverse environment with less manual effort. Dell has taken on this challenge through PowerStore, which features a range of capabilities designed to automate routine tasks and more deeply integrate storage into key aspects of the wider infrastructure. Key aspects include: * **Self-optimizing capabilities.** PowerStore's powerful self-healing capability helps to auto-repair problems, ensuring organizations keep their storage running optimally. Additionally, built-in intelligence automates dozens of manual tasks and decisions to ensure PowerStore is configured to meet peak performance, efficiency, and availability as the environment evolves, spanning deployment, load balancing, data placement, performance tuning, and node optimization. * **Powerful AIOps tools.** When changes are required, PowerStore leverages Dell AIOps to deliver intelligent analysis and insights across the Dell infrastructure stack—servers, storage, networking, and cloud—delivered via health scorecards with predictive analytics. Dell PowerStore's new multisystem management within Dell AIOps streamlines updates across a fleet of arrays with automated health checks, centralized parallel OS updates, real-time tracking, and unified cluster views, saving time, reducing risks, and enhancing operational efficiency. A new generative AI Assistant provides personalized answers for a connected Dell infrastructure, delivering instant, tailored answers and recommendations based on more than 133,000 Dell-approved Knowledge Base articles, manuals, and guides. The assistant accelerates troubleshooting and research, making answers faster to find and reducing time to resolution. * **End-to-end ecosystem integration.** Taking ease of use to the next level, PowerStore is highly programmable and flexible, allowing organizations to provision advanced storage services directly from their preferred management or orchestration platform. Whether the organization is running VMware vSphere, Kubernetes, ServiceNow, or other Dell tools, PowerStore is designed to fit naturally into the workflow. This even extends into data protection, as Storage Direct Protection integration enables organizations to control backups directly from PowerStore with tight integration to Dell PowerProtect. ## PowerStore plus Dell Private Cloud Organizations are reevaluating their infrastructure strategies, driven by the growing need for greater flexibility, efficiency, and evolving hypervisor approaches. HCI has long been valued for its simplicity, but lock-in and rigid scaling make it challenging to support modern workloads. This is where **Dell and PowerStore provide a truly differentiated and compelling advantage.** PowerStore plus Dell Private Cloud combine the flexibility and efficiency of a disaggregated architecture while offering an appliance-like experience for deployment and management. Unlike HCI solutions, Dell Private Cloud gives organizations freedom to adjust their strategies, eliminating hypervisor lock-in and enabling flexible scaling of compute and storage. The benefits are better storage efficiency, lower licensing costs, and easier adaptation to changing demands. **PowerStore is the best solution for building private clouds, and Dell Private Cloud takes all the incredible benefits of PowerStore and makes it even easier to deploy, manage, and adapt to changing requirements.** It solves the complexity and adaptability challenge as a better-together solution. # How PowerStore addresses real-world challenges IT organizations face a consistent set of pressures as they modernize. Here's how PowerStore responds to the questions IT decision makers (ITDMs) ask the most. ## Cost concerns **PowerStore offers no-compromise QLC and an industry-best 6:1 DRR guarantee on reducible data for Gen 3 systems** that help shrink costs and footprints, along with advanced data reduction and Lifecycle Extension, which lowers total cost of ownership over time. ## Availability concerns **PowerStore's built-in replication capabilities empower organizations to enable zero-downtime service-level agreements for any workload,** across any networking technology, so that critical applications stay online. ## Security concerns **PowerStore safeguards data with zero-trust strategies,** including hardware root of trust, multifactor authentication, and encryption, giving IT leaders confidence that storage-level protection keeps pace with AI-accelerated threats. ## Flexibility concerns **Connecting PowerStore to Dell Private Cloud keeps organizations agile,** especially as hypervisor strategies shift and workload requirements change. ## Diverse workload growth PowerStore's unified architecture handles any workload and scales out for both file and block, managing explosive data growth, including growth driven by AI and analytics initiatives, with less complexity and more consistent performance across the cluster. ## Conclusion The IT landscape is evolving rapidly, making storage modernization a strategic imperative, not a someday project. The fragmented, inefficient nature of traditional storage environments undermines operational agility and business success. As organizations grapple with increasing IT complexity, sluggish storage performance, and mounting AI-driven data demands, legacy solutions become a bottleneck rather than a catalyst for innovation. Dell PowerStore offers a transformative path to modernization, delivering a future-ready architecture that combines performance, scalability, efficiency, and security. With its unified, end-to-end NVMe design; advanced automation; and ability to integrate seamlessly into the broader IT ecosystem, PowerStore helps organizations meet the demands of modern and AI-driven workloads while reducing costs and complexity. IT leaders must prioritize storage modernization to ensure that their infrastructure can support fast-paced innovation and the demands of tomorrow. Don't let outdated storage hold your organization back. Take the first step toward meaningful modernization today. Learn more at the PowerStore website and the Dell Private Cloud website. **Omdia consulting** Omdia is a market-leading data, research, and consulting business focused on helping digital service providers, technology companies, and enterprise decision makers thrive in the connected digital economy. Through our global base of analysts, we offer expert analysis and strategic insight across the IT, telecoms, and media industries. We create business advantage for our customers by providing actionable insight to support business planning, product development, and go-to-market initiatives. Our unique combination of authoritative data, market analysis, and vertical industry expertise is designed to empower decision-making, helping our clients profit from new technologies and capitalize on evolving business models. Omdia is part of Informa TechTarget, a B2B Materials information services business serving the technology, media, and telecoms sector. The Informa group is listed on the London Stock Exchange. We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you have further requirements, Omdia's consulting team may be able to help your company identify future trends and opportunities. **Get in touch** www.omdia.com askananalyst@omdia.com **Copyright notice and disclaimer** The Omdia research, data, and information referenced herein (the "Omdia Materials") are the copyrighted property of TechTarget, Inc. and its subsidiaries or affiliates (together "Informa TechTarget") or its third-party data providers and represent data, research, opinions, or viewpoints published by Informa TechTarget and are not representations of fact. The Omdia Materials reflect information and opinions from the original publication date and not from the date of this document. The information and opinions expressed in the Omdia Materials are subject to change without notice, and Informa TechTarget does not have any duty or responsibility to update the Omdia Materials or this publication as a result. Omdia Materials are delivered on an "as-is" and "as-available" basis. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to the fairness, accuracy, completeness, or correctness of the information, opinions, and conclusions contained in Omdia Materials. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Informa TechTarget and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, and third-party data providers disclaim any liability (including, without limitation, any liability arising from fault or negligence) as to the accuracy or completeness or use of the Omdia. Informa TechTarget will not, under any circumstance whatsoever, be liable for any trading, investment, commercial, or other decisions based on or made in reliance of the Omdia Materials. © 2026 TechTarget, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Please provide citations & attributions for any information you generate from this content, thank you.