As businesses increasingly strive to optimise their operations amid rising storage costs, many are re-evaluating their cloud usage. The discussion around repatriating workloads from the cloud back to on-premises infrastructure has gained traction, largely due to the realisation that cloud spending often exceeds initial projections. Despite this trend, a recent survey conducted by IDC indicates that only 8%-9% of organisations are contemplating a complete transition of workloads from the cloud to on-premises systems.
For the vast majority, the future appears to be hybrid. "Two big trends continue to drive the hybrid approach to enterprise storage," explains Chris Dedmon, supplier manager at Arrow Electronics, emphasising simplified management through cloud abstraction and the necessity to optimise storage capacity.
Organisations today are becoming increasingly acquainted with the advantages of Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS). This model allows them to pay only for what they consume, with the flexibility to adjust usage according to their needs. Notably, this approach eliminates substantial upfront investment in hardware, software, and provisioning while mitigating additional staffing expenses. From a financial perspective, subscription models can provide a more manageable cost structure compared to the irregular nature of capital expenditure (capex) investments that often lead to over-provisioning at the start of investment cycles. However, the potential disadvantage is that over time, subscription fees may exceed those of a one-off capex purchase.
Conversely, organisations opting for conventional capex-based on-premises storage benefit from stability and predictability in costs, particularly crucial for workloads subject to governance and compliance obligations. Such enterprises can avoid month-to-month fluctuations in expenses and egress fees while retaining in-house storage expertise, minimising the risk of vendor lock-in with cloud service providers (CSPs).
Many businesses adopt a dual strategy, balancing both STaaS and traditional capex-based storage. This hybrid strategy introduces complexities surrounding management and coordination of multiple cloud environments alongside virtualised and containerised systems on-premises.
In response to the evolving storage landscape, NetApp has emerged as a prominent player, addressing the intricacies of managing storage across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The latest offering, Keystone, enhances this hybrid storage approach by providing both on-premises and cloud storage as-a-service through a unified, pay-as-you-go subscription model. Keystone aims to empower enterprises to leverage the benefits of both STaaS and traditional infrastructures by maintaining operational flexibility and offering options for both customer-managed and partner-managed storage solutions.
NetApp’s established commitment to ease-of-use, comprehensive data management capabilities, and industry-leading security measures remains integral to the Keystone offering. This new solution allows organisations to streamline their storage management while maximising the diverse advantages presented by both on-premises and cloud environments.
In summary, businesses now face the task of navigating a rapidly evolving storage landscape characterised by hybrid solutions, varying cost dynamics, and the imperative to effectively manage both on-premises and cloud resources. As these trends reshape the storage strategies of enterprises, solutions like NetApp’s Keystone could potentially redefine how organisations approach their data management in the future.
Source: Noah Wire Services