As the range of storage service technologies and offerings expands, they will be positioned in a variety of ways by vendors, including as wholesale replacements for captive storage resources. However, while influential parties (e.g., finance) in some organizations may push for a broad substitution of storage subsystems by storage services, prudent strategies will recognize that storage services are better viewed as a complement to captive subsystems. Temporary capacity will be one important use of storage services, but other, specialized services will be adopted most quickly. In general, these other services will tend to be tied to the ability to offer highly differentiated cost and performance parameters, thereby becoming especially attractive to owners of specialized applications that are highly dependent on one, limited aspect of storage technology.
Action Item: IT organizations should promote the potential role of specialty storage services to their business as a means to foster both successful and appropriate adoption of these new capabilities.
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