The cloud and storage – they should be perfect together for enterprises looking for a better and more cost-effective way to not just store but access critical data. However, questions about implementation of cloud-based storage have been an obstacle to cloud adoption. They need not be.

As I discussed in early March, much of the focus on the three core elements driving the transformation of IT services delivery to a datacenter-centric model—applications, networking and storage— concentration has tended to be on the first two in the past. The good news is that concentration is now on all three, as enterprises globally look to next generation cloud-based storage to help expedite the move to cloud.

The problem facing vendors is that many enterprises, especially larger ones, remain skeptical. IT professionals’ attitudes are basically that they want proof of all of the declaratory statements that seem to paint the cloud as the answer to “E”verything.  

Red Hat (News - Alert) provides success stories

There is an old saying, “Seeing is believing!” With this in mind, you are invited to join me on May 30, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. EDT on the webinar “The Advantages of Open Software-defined Storage.” During this session, Veda Shankar, technical marketing manager at Red Hat, will be examining key use cases for Red Hat's open software-defined storage platform, Red Hat Storage Server.

The use cases covered will include:

• Content cloud/general purpose file serving
• Enterprise dropbox/cloud storage for service providers
• Near line storage for back-up and archive
• Virtual machine image storage

In short, many if not all of the questions that may have been holding your organization back from accelerating your move to the cloud will be addressed. In addition, stay with us for the entire presentation. Not only will you have an opportunity to get your personal questions answered, but there will be a live demonstration and best practices on how to configure Red Hat Storage Server for specific workloads.

As noted at the top, fear or skepticism about the unknown should not be holding back consideration of moving to the cloud. In fact, to get yourself ready for this informative session, I recommend two things that that are worth a read. The first is a very timely article by my colleague Rory Thompson on new research that TMCnet.com has obtained exclusively that will be released in the next few days, “Cloud Adoption Exceeding Expectations and Hopes, New Global Study Finds.” The second is Red Hat’s Top 10 IT Predictions for 2013.  

Will 2013 be the year your enterprise moves critical information to the cloud? Armed with information about the benefits and best practices it could and possibly should be.