The network remains the single point of entry into your "cloud", and will play a key role in coordinating the management activities of the various components that businesses choose to include in their "cloud" design. Undoubtedly, enterprises will build private storage clouds within their own firewall for archival or streaming media as well as using public clouds from service providers. A business in the near future may move many of its servers to the cloud, and may even move a considerable amount of storage to the cloud. As more applications and different data types will be making up the flow of data into the cloud, the requirement of data classification will again present itself as cloud storage evolves. The criticality of the IT function to the survival of most businesses in the modern world and a heightened regulatory environment is making data classification a necessity for businesses of all sizes. This will present challenges for cloud storage providers to overcome, and considerations for businesses to accept, particularly if business critical applications should one day become cloud candidates.
There are six main considerations regarding cloud adoption, including:
- Security remains a major challenge for cloud providers as concerns that the internet can possibly be as reliable as data in enterprise class repositories haven’t diminished. The security level of the cloud will have to be demonstrated to overcome these legitimate risks before critical data can start filling the cloud.
- Where is my cloud data located? Certain compliance regulations require that the exact physical location of data be known. Currently cloud storage solutions are location independent thus eliminating a variety of tier 3 archival and compliance applications for consideration.
- Standards have yet to arrive for cloud storage which historically leads to a period of proprietary solutions before de-facto or real standards arrive.
- Scalability should not be a concern for cloud-qualified applications as cloud storage is theoretically unlimited. Will the cloud provider offer software tools that can classify data and identify candidates for the cloud and determine the optimal level the data should reside in the storage hierarchy?
- Unstructured data and email archives are obvious cloud candidates and represent large amounts of unclassified data. In addition to reallocating files to cloud storage based on their age, moving files based on their types to their optimal and most economical location in the cloud will become important. As this point, no data classification tools that can do this are evident.
- A new and powerful IT and CIO-level storage mandate of the near future will require that “data that isn’t accessed shouldn’t consume power.” This will encourage moving data to the greener tier 3 storage solutions which is mainly the domain of tape, the greenest of all data center storage. Do any of the cloud storage providers address tape in their cloud storage plans? Why not? If OPEX is of any concern, tape should be included in any cost-effective cloud storage strategies.
Data classification tools are becoming available from multiple companies. This means multiple GUIs, multiple software licenses, with potentially more touch points and interoperability challenges. Some tools are focused on information classification and management, while others are positioned to minimize data loss and privacy violations. Nonetheless, software can facilitate a solution for customers to begin the classification process as there is an element of storage optimization and operational efficiency to be gained with this process. As we have witnessed in the past few years in the data center, data classification enables a business to get the right data in its optimal place in the tiered storage hierarchy. Beginning in 2009 and beyond, data classification and the tiered storage hierarchy will expand to the cloud. Using data classification and storage tiers has always required careful planning to ensure that data can be optimally stored, secured and retrieved as the business requires.
Action Item: Can the cloud deliver the necessary level of storage sophistication and be more than an enormous web-based bit bucket? Though some applications are easy choices for cloud storage, entering into successful cloud storage and data classification projects should be undertaken seriously as brown clouds won’t survive.
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