Originating Author: Peter Burris
As storage growth continues, CFO’s increasingly point to the capital costs of storage as a problem. Three responses are possible. First, suppress future storage capacity requirements; given application and technology trends, this is not a workable option in almost any organization. Second, rapidly adopt storage-related technologies that better leverage storage resources: this is a fundamental goal of storage virtualization, but will put major suppliers of storage that rely on GB growth on the defensive (e.g., EMC). Third, attempt to substitute operating costs for capital costs by applying new “storage as a service” approaches to satisfying capacity requirements: this transfers unproven “software as a service” (SaaS) delivery models to the storage industry. EMC is the first major storage supplier to tout STaaS (storage as a service) for mainstream user accounts. In some domains (e.g., backup/restore of mobile user data) STaaS is a viable -- even attractive -- option: EMC claims that 55-60% of enterprise data is individually created, centrally storage, an excellent target for newly-acquired mozy.com. However, STaaS faces significant market development hurdles in other storage domains. Fundamentally, the basic problems of SaaS (no real cost advantages, real service limitations, customization constraints) haven’t changed, and are likely to be even more pronounced in STaaS.
Action Item: STaaS (storage as a service) should not be considered as an alternative to other tactics for gaining control over capital expenditures related to storage.
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