Cloud Storage Benefits

The Benefits of Cloud StorageMay 19, 2009
Stephen Foskett, Director of Consulting, Nirvanix

Abstract
The demand for storage has increased, placing significant stress on "in house" storage infrastructures and costly overcapacity build-outs
Factoring in our current economic state and the pressures of power, space, capital expenditures, global performance, and availability issues, companies are faced with an exploding challenges and costs
Cloud storage platforms enable enterprises to cut costs and focus on more important aspects of business, but with many competitors in the marketplace it's hard for businesses to decide which option is best
This session will teach attendees about the uses of cloud storage within enterprise levels of deployment and shed some light on the current solutions available today
2

Top Storage Issues for IT
3

Storage Is Supposed To Be Getting Cheaper!
4
Disk cost is dropping rapidly
$250 buys:
1994: 2 GB
1999: 20 GB
2004: 200 GB
2009: 2000 GB
But enterprise storage costs keep rising!

Explosive Growth of Unstructured Data
5
Analog to Digital Conversion
film, voice, TV
User Generated Content
at work and home
Bigger Digital Shadows
multiple versions and formats
95% is unstructured
Source: IDC – The Expanding Digital Universe
Nirvanix Confidential

Conventional tiered storage has little impact
Tiered Storage: Where’s The Savings?
6
Storage arrays have a little RAM to accelerate disks
Online:
“The Box”
RAM Cache
High-end storage costs 4-8x as much as plain disk
Fibre Channel
ATA
“Low cost” enterprise storage delivers only 20%-30% TCO reduction
Offline:
Tapes and
Trucks
Tape-Based Archives
Tape looks cheap, but data is inaccessible and costly to bring back on line, so we only use it for archives

Rising cost and complexity of storage
Explosive growth of unstructured data
Tiered storage isn’t the solution
Need to do more than just lock data away
Companies Must Change Storage Strategy to Consolidate & Gain Efficiencies
7
Inflection Points – Move to the Cloud

Defining Cloud Storage
Storage is offered as a service with standard interfaces
Billing is usage based
Infrastructure is multi-tenant and scalable
8
SOURCE: McKinsey & Company

Unleash Tiered Storage!
Flash and Cloud Storage changes everything!
9
Online:
Next-gen
Storage
Solid state performs much better but costs a lot – use it as a cache for slow disks
Flash
Fibre Channel
Some data still needs high-performance FC disks
ATA
Online!
Cloud
Storage
Most on-site data resides on accelerated ATA
Cloud
Less-accessed primary data is moved to the cloud
Archival data lives online in the connected cloud, too!

Need to Keep and Reuse - Media Example
10
Content is the core IP of media companies
Protection of raw footage
Digital preservation of historical works
Increasing need to repackage, repurpose , distribute and monetize content
“Archive everything - we don’t always know what we will need”
Transition to file based workflows moves archive from dusty storage room to critical storage element

Cloud vs. Internal Storage

Cloud Offers Better Access at Lower Cost
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SAN
NAS
Cost
Reduce Cost
VTL
Tape
Increase Accessibility
Accessibility
Companies Can Change Their Archive Storage Strategy

Cloud Storage: Compelling Enterprise Value
Store
Secure
Reliable
Scalable
Low cost
Manage
Built-in user management
Account and directory management
Policy-enabled file system
Access
Global reach
Standards-based interfaces
Integrated services

Enterprise Cloud Storage: Why Not?
14

Security & Reliability
No System is Perfect (including yours)
What to look for
Security audit (by a respected firm or customer)
SAS 70 (especially Type 2)
Customizable SLA (with remedies)
Transparency
Encryption (but who holds the keys?)

Encryption for Cloud Storage
Where should encryption live?
(andwho holds the keys?)

Performance
Cloud Storage is not for all Data
But it’s for a lot of Data
Cloud-appropriate data:
File-based, unstructured
Non mission-critical
Value in keeping it accessible
Requirement to be outside the firewall
Multi-user, multi-site
Rarely written, frequently read

Ingestion
Loading initial data can derail even the best cloud use cases
Bandwidth is sized to daily requirements
Initial data loading often requires an alternate path
Can you ship tapes? Disk arrays?
Who manages? Who pays?

Implementation
APIs Aren’t “Simple” to Integrate
What to look for
Robust integrated functionality in applications
Solutions & integration services
Enterprise support
Standard storage protocol support

Paths to the Cloud

Economics
TCO is More Than Just $/GB
What to look at
Infrastructure costs
Connectivity/network costs
Security fees
Hardware utilization
System complexity
System management

Barriers are Down: What Next?
Start with cloud proof-of-concept
Match dataset with security & bandwidth needs
Select a provider based on TCO
Perform test & measure outcomes
Secure multi-year agreements

Who Is Nirvanix
23
The Premier “Cloud Storage” Service Provider for the Enterprise
Backed by Intel Capital, Mission Ventures,
Valhalla Partners, Windward Ventures and European Founders Fund
2007 “Storage Products of the Year”2008 “Top Startups to Watch”
2008 “Product of the Year”
Over 500 customers including leading Fortune 10, Media & Entertainment and Web 2.0 companies

24
Thank You
Nirvanix
We manage your storage,
so you can manage your business
www.nirvanix.com
twitter.com/nirvanix
Stephen Foskett
sfoskett@nirvanix.com
Enterprise Storage Strategies Blog: bit.ly/ESSBlog
Personal Blog: blog.fosketts.net
Enterprise IT Content: gestaltit.com

Cloud Storage Benefits

by Stephen Foskett

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