CLOUD INTEGRATED STORAGE (CIS) THAT PROVIDE CREATIVE PURCHASING OPPORTUNITIES FOR CUSTOMERS

Enterprises are transitioning mission-critical workloads to public cloud storage as the cloud storage industry consolidates in the backdrop. Several recommendations are outlined for CIOs to ensure business continuity and lower total cost of ownership.

IMPACTS:

•           The cloud storage industry is failing to provide large-scale implementations to meet the increasingly sophisticated demand from customers.

• Service providers are experimenting with pricing strategies for cloud integrated storage (CIS) that provide creative purchasing opportunities for customers.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Align around a single cloud storage vendor whenever practical to simplify vendor engagements and CIS infrastructure customization.

• Compare CIS pricing with on-premises storage pricing by comparing usage charges and infrastructure savings. For example, when replacing existing on-premises storage with CIS, savings will be realized by the elimination of backup and disaster recovery applications meant for data protection.

• Work with CIS infrastructure vendors that have a clear service and support methodology spanning the gateway vendor, intervening networks and cloud provider. Several loose partnership relationships exist today that leave uncertainty as to who is the lead vendor.

• Define data management policies and enforcement techniques to minimize data leakage into unregulated or public domains.

ANALYSIS:

Technologies such as cloud storage gateways, WAN optimization and caching algorithms, along with pricing policies and services offered by public cloud storage providers, are all vital elements for CIS. All of these technologies and approaches are rapidly evolving and thus require due diligence by organizations intent on moving into the cloud storage arena. In addition, assembling these elements requires IT organizations to engage with a vendor community that has an uneven or developing competence. Most IT organizations are accustomed to working with a storage community largely composed of established and experienced enterprise-scale vendors such as EMC, HP and IBM. This is not currently the case for public cloud storage. Instead, as organizations move to cloud storage, they must deal with little-known startup companies or large, but new, public cloud vendors. These vendors are refining their business models, customer engagement approaches and product offerings. Given this backdrop and to mitigate implementation risk, as IT organizations consider CIS, they must pay attention to trends in the cloud storage industry and their impact on the successful addition of CIS to new or existing data center environments.

Although there are many developing situations in the cloud storage market, this research examines four impacts that affect the vendor and technology selections in this vibrant industry.

Run proofs of concept. This advice may seem obvious, but because of the newness of the CIS industry, organizations should confirm acceptable system operation by at least simulating use cases in an actual CIS environment. Cloud and gateway vendors should fully support this activity and work together to prove acceptability. Customers should avoid vendors that cannot meet this requirement.

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