Why your business should be implementing a hybrid cloud storage strategy
As public cloud adoption matures, the generally accepted consensus of the long-term trend for technology will be the development of hybrid and multi-cloud operations. In some scenarios, for example, the public cloud offers greater flexibility and cost management, whereas on-premises infrastructure provides greater customisation. In this article, we discuss how businesses should develop a hybrid cloud storage strategy that uses the best of on-premises and cloud in a strategic and flexible manner. By way of example, we will compare our recommendations to the leader in the hybrid cloud storage market, NetApp.
Before we get into the details, it’s worth first looking at why a hybrid storage strategy makes sense in modern IT and how this approach delivers more substantial benefit than either an on-premises or cloud strategy alone. We should qualify that if a business has been “born in the cloud” and never used on-premises infrastructure, then this discussion will probably not be for you. However, most mature companies already have a mix of technology solutions that will include both on-premises and the public cloud.
At the heart of the discussion is data. Every business on the planet uses data in some form as a driver of increased revenue and competitiveness. In the early days of IT, that data probably took the form of structured tabular information showing sales, profit, and loss. Today, businesses combine a mix of multiple data types and sources that include machine-generated, proprietary and public sources of information.
All this data needs to be stored somewhere, and increasingly, businesses are adopting “delete nothing” policies or retaining data for extended periods. When data gets used for business processes that include analytics, the processing may be done on-premises or could be executed in the public cloud, where the on-demand availability of complex compute products like GPUs can arguably be used more efficiently.
So, why build a hybrid storage and data strategy that spans both public and private clouds? Here are some benefits of public cloud storage compared to on-premises deployments.
Cost Efficiency – the public cloud enables IT organisations to pay for usage rather than buy infrastructure. Consumption is based on simple metrics like capacity in terabytes and performance (IOPS).
Time to Value – accessibility of cloud storage is measured in minutes. A typical file system with cloud volumes can be provisioned and active within 30 minutes through a GUI, CLI or API. The process doesn’t require human intervention and, in the most advanced implementations, is integrated natively with other cloud services.
Risk Avoidance – a service-based consumption model pushes the infrastructure management tasks to the service provider. Typical on-premises tasks that include design, planning, installation, and deployment all have a lead time associated with them. Global supply chain challenges have introduced a degree of risk for on-premises purchases. We’ll discuss the implications of this in a moment.
Innovation – the public cloud offers a breadth of technology that evolves on an almost daily basis. Developers can try new solutions, build applications for testing, and tear them down with minimal investment and no commitment. The result is much greater agility to develop and try out new applications and technologies without the financial obligation. Innovation doesn’t just apply to the end-user side of the equation. When services are delivered through a cloud model, the service provider can introduce new features and functionality at a much greater pace.
It’s worth taking a moment to talk about supply chain issues in the current market. The COVID pandemic has impacted the global supply of microprocessors and directly affected many industries, including IT. Whilst we can look at COVID as a once in a generation event (or even once a century), the supply chain will always be subject to fluctuation.
