Cloud storage might give organizations access to the latest technology without having to invest in capital infrastructure, but this doesn’t mean the cloud is for everyone.
That’s according to Stephen Buckler, chief operating officer of Horizon Technology, as new survey data points to an increasing appetite among IT professionals to shift spending on storage out of the data center and into the cloud.
The survey of 374 IT professionals and managers by Enterprise Storage Forum revealed that 51% of respondents expect to invest in public cloud in the next couple of years, significantly more than any other storage technology.
At the same time, the report confirmed that HDD remains the dominant form of storage in the data center, strengthening the argument that the game is far from over for hard disk drives.
Approximately half of organizations surveyed are seriously considering spending on cloud storage in the next two years.
WEIGHING THE OPTIONS
When considering a cloud service provider it is important to fully assess all aspects of security and cost, Buckler says.
“Think about how you use your data. When Dropbox started off it made sense to use AWS, but as it grew the cost of AWS was a drag on its P&L. By bringing the data center in-house they saved $75 million over two years.”
Supply chain forces have also played a role in the development of the public cloud. Last year’s NAND shortage drove a good amount of fresh business into the cloud, with the hyperscalers leveraging their bulk purchasing power within a tightening market.
“They were getting first dibs on stock, leaving others waiting to launch critical projects and having to navigate a shortage,” Buckler said.
However, with the NAND shortage in the rearview mirror and amid continued softening in SSD pricing, the question is how enterprises will respond to the shiny new options increasingly available to them on-premise and in colocation.
The emergence of SSD protocols such as NVMe 1.3, the demands of edge computing, and ongoing R&D into advanced HDD technology designed to increase data storage density make it more appealing for storage engineers to explore solutions closer to home without resorting fully to the cloud.
Hardware pricing is an additional consideration, as are the potentially expensive egress fees levied by the CSPs.
“Will anticipated increased availability and price drops in memory and storage, combined with easy-to-use hypervisor solutions such as Nutanix, give companies pause to rethink their cloud strategy and the impact on their P&L?” Buckler asked.
His comments come as new research by TrendFocus points to continued growth in the nearline HDD market as storage leaders such as Seagate and Western Digital work to increase HDD data storage densities through such technologies as HAMR and MAMR.
REVISITING COLO
It certainly isn’t the case that the march toward public cloud is inevitable.
Senior Gartner analyst David Cappuccio recently predicted a renewed focus on colocation centers as organizations look to deploy radically more flexible and distributed IT infrastructure to deliver services.
In a blog post on the Gartner site, Cappuccio argued that colocation providers will increasingly offer enhanced services “that go well beyond traditional power, floor space and support services.”
Benefits of such flexibility can include “reduced latency, improved customer experience, enhanced corporate reputation, stronger service continuity, geodiversity, improved compliance or mandated data location residency requirements.”
“IT’s primary function will be to enable the business to be more agile, to enter new markets more quickly, to deliver services closer to the customer, and to position specific workloads based on business, regulatory and geopolitical impacts,” he wrote.
NAVIGATING THE DATA BOOM
One thing for sure is that data generation will continue to increase with breakneck speed and further balloon the market for storage capacity.
In one measure, research by Coughlin Associates predicts a 3.5 times growth in digital storage requirements for the entertainment industry by 2023.
“The single biggest application (by storage capacity) for digital storage in the next several years, as well as one of the most challenging, is the digital conversion of film, videotape and other analog formats,” the report says.
It anticipates the creation of more than 131 exabytes of fresh storage for the purpose of content conversion and digital archiving by 2023.
Amazon and the other hyperscalers remain hungry to cash in on the seemingly relentless demand.
Analyst firm IT Brand Pulse projects that AWS will be the largest enterprise storage vendor within two years, potentially generating more than $15 billion in annual storage revenue.
