The Storage Economist

I have been asked to provide more content on storage cloud and the economic effects or considerations. Lucky for me (it is my birthday week), I was handed this article that does a good job of outlining TCO of do-it-yourself or through a cloud subscription service.

Cloud storage is becoming popular, at a lower-and-lower cost entry point for the right kind of data and applications. A few thoughts to add to Sharon’s points:

• Look at the data and the value-to-infrastructure investment that you need. Putting low-value data on the cloud makes good sense.
• Don’t confuse price and cost. The price you pay for disk is only about 20% of the TCO. If you see someone offering $.25/GB/month and that relieves you of purchase, SW, maintenance costs, labor to manage, power and space it might be a really good deal
• Burst mode pricing is an attractive option for using cloud storage
• Ask the cloud vendor if they can offer thick and thin-provisioned capacities for a better rate
• Understand if the price you pay includes backup, DR protection, RAID protection etc.
• Remote storage is great for archives, Backups etc. Make sure you do not have to spend more on your own infrastructure to utilize clouds
• Added bandwidth
• Security or encryption waivers for the data

As the article points out, these options are great for SMB, and even large organizations use this option for specific applications like a burst mode marketing campaign.