While cloud storage has “tremendous potential” for reducing a company’s overall cost by eliminating upfront and ongoing investments in infrastructure, floor space, power, cooling and management, enterprises are not turning to the cloud as often as one might think.
According to a report put out by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), this result is because for the most part “services on the market lack enterprise-class features.”
One cloud storage company, Cirtas, is challenging that fact, however, as it provides a feature set that makes remote cloud storage function like local, SAN-attached storage, with all the enterprise-class features expected in today’s data centers.
“Cloud storage service providers are offering data storage services at a fraction of the price IT departments pay to store and manage data themselves,” ESG states in the report, available on Cirtas’ website. “But it is not all good news; despite the attractive cost of cloud storage services, many of these services were initially designed to support consumer-class applications and don’t have the advanced data protection and security functionality IT expects and requires.”
“Cirtas is trying to change that equation with its Bluejet Cloud Storage Controller, providing a local cloud storage controller that acts like any other SAN or NAS-attached device in the data center and offers all the advanced functionality required by enterprise users,” ESG continued.
The benefits of cloud storage are clear: cost savings with both CAPEX and OPEX (News - Alert), stronger return on investment, better tracking efficiencies, less power utilized and a more streamlined storage process. In fact, when asked, “Which of the following considerations do you believe will be most important in justifying IT investments to your organization’s business management team over the next 12-18 months?”—56 percent of enterprises chose reduction in operational costs.
Despite this, enterprises are still not turning to the cloud that frequently, according to ESG.
For those looking to cut costs and benefit from enterprise-class features, Bluejet is the right choice, according to the report. With Bluejet, the storage capacity behind the local controller is shared between a local cache and cloud storage service providers, allowing users to have control over data availability while enjoying cheaper storage space.
Cirtas Bluejet presents a standards-based iSCSI storage target to the servers as if it were just another enterprise array on the SAN. The cloud storage company also takes care of writing to the proprietary service provider APIs and eliminates the need to redesign applications to use cloud storage.
Bluejet also offers a number of features that are expected in local SAN-attached enterprise storage systems including policy-based snapshot, volume management and access controls; virtual thin provisioning; local data caching; data reduction technology which minimizes data storage and transfer fees; secure data transfer and storage; existing SAN infrastructure compatibility, and data portability.
“With Bluejet, Cirtas has tackled the top user concerns about deploying cloud storage: it is standards-based rather than proprietary, it has enterprise-class data availability features, end-to-end encryption with user-based key management, data reduction technology to decrease bandwidth (and total storage) consumption, and a local cache to increase performance and improve response time,” states the report. “It allows users to keep existing storage management practices in place, but provides seamless and infinite capacity.”
Cirtas Bluejet “changes the discussion” surrounding cloud storage, according to ESG, as it offers the capabilities that are currently missing from other cloud service providers, particularly enterprise-class capabilities.
ESG predicted that with Cirtas Bluejet on the market, 2010 could become the year of cloud storage adoption. One wonders what it predicts for 2011.
Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Janice McDuffee