The cloud computing model has brought about a fundamental shift in the way businesses seek to meet their IT needs. No longer must companies devote scarce capital (CapEx) funds to the purchase of their own servers, storage, and networking hardware.
Businesses are moving to the cloud at an accelerating pace. A recent report from 451 Research indicates that by 2018, 60 percent of all enterprise workloads are expected to be based in the cloud. Yet many companies are still hesitating – not because they doubt the value of the cloud to their businesses, but because they recognize that moving their existing workloads to an entirely new platform is not a trivial task.
MSPs have built their businesses on offering a suite of standard IT services to their customers. But now many of those customers have begun migrating to the cloud, and taking advantage of the unique services the cloud model offers. That should be a warning flag for traditional MSPs. With much of their customer base moving to the cloud, those MSPs that don’t offer their own set of cloud-based services in a managed private cloud risk being left behind.
As companies scramble to cope with an exponentially growing amount of data they have to deal with, the cloud-based STaaS (Storage as a Service) model
IT professionals are often struggling with the question of whether they should move their data to the cloud or build a private cloud. This should not be the question. The real question is “what are you trying to accomplish?”
For as long as I can remember, the standard model for buying enterprise-class storage has been based on a capital purchase. The customer specs out their requirements and perhaps runs an RFP (Request for Proposal) if the deal is large enough, or their industry sector requires it. The actual purchase of the hardware may be done as a finance deal and amortized over a number of years for accounting purposes.
In the first part of this blog I reviewed some of the new operational challenges that have to be undertaken to ensure that storage runs smoothly, and their ensuing costs.
Recently, Simon Robinson from 451 Research wrote an update about us. I hope you take the time to read it. It’s a thoughtful and considered view, and as you’ve come to expect from 451, balanced to show both the good and the not-so-good.
451 Research: “Zadara is offering a glimpse into the future of enterprise storage”
