Research Cloud Storage 6340672

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A n a l y t i c s . I n f o r m a t i o n W e e k . c o m

Report ID: R2750611

A n a l y t i c s R e p o r t

C l o u d S t o r a g e : ChangingDynamics Beyond Serv ices

Surrounded by data? Demands from users for fast access?

Endless retention policies? Cloud storage can help, say

vendors. However, our survey reveals that IT is skeptical.

While off-site services may indeed have the potential to

transform the storage landscape, most respondents are

rightly leery of moving precious data to a public cloud.

By Michael Biddick

J u n e 2 0$


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A n a l y t i c s . In for ma t i on W e e k .c om

N e w S t o r a g e D y n a m i c s

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CONT

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4 Authors Bio

5 Executive Summary

6 Research Synopsis

7 Limitless Data

8 Impact Assessment

10 Lay Down the Law

15 The Economics of Storage

17 Why Not Go Virtual?

18 32 Flavors

23 Bells and Whistles

27 Vendor Choices

29 Your Strategy

36 Related Reports

2 June 2011 2011 InformationWeek, Reproduction Prohibited

A n a l y t i c s R e p o r t s


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CONT

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7 Figure 1: Approach to Public Cloud Storage Services

9 Figure 2: Degree of Concern With On-Premises Storage Costs

10 Figure 3: On-Premises Storage Costs

11 Figure 4: Data Retention Periods

12 Figure 5: Data Retention Policy Compliance

13 Figure 6: Drivers of Storage Growth

15 Figure 7: Tools Used to Manage Storage Systems

17 Figure 8: Current Distribution of Storage Capacity

18 Figure 9: Distribution of Storage Capacity in Two Years

19 Figure 10: Functions Moved to Public Cloud Storage

20 Figure 11: Reasons for Not Adopting Public Cloud Storage Services

22 Figure 12: Importance of Cloud Storage Features

23 Figure 13: Types of On-Premises Storage Used

26 Figure 14: Public Cloud Storage Concerns

28 Figure 15: Storage Resource Management Vendors Used

30 Figure 16: Cloud Storage Vendors

32 Figure 17: Company Revenue

33 Figure 18: Company Size

34 Figure 19: Industry

35 Figure 20: Job Title


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Michael Biddick

Fusion PPT

Michael Biddick is president and CTO of Fusion PPT and an

InformationWeek Analytics contributor. He has worked with hun-

dreds of government and telecommunications service providers in

the development of operational management solutions. Most re-

cently he has supported the Department of Homeland Security and

the U.S. Department of Defense in the deployment of ITIL-based processesthat are utilized to make their organizations more transparent and cost effec-

tive. Certified in several ITIL life cycle service areas, Michael is also able to

leverage more than a decade of operational tool design and implementation

experience with service desks, network management systems and consolidated

management portals in making enterprise architecture decisions.

Before joining Fusion PPT, Michael spent 10 years with Windward IT

Solutions and also worked with Booz Allen Hamilton in its enterprise network

services group, developing network management solutions for a wide variety

of government and commercial clients. He also served on the academic staff of

the University of Wisconsin Law School as the director of technology, heading

up all aspects of IT management for the organization.

Michael earned a master of science from Johns Hopkins University and a dual

bachelors degree in political science and history from the University of

Wisconsin-Madison. As a contributing technology editor to InformationWeek

and Network Computing, he has authored more than 50 articles, including

reports on cloud computing, government IT strategies, SaaS and IT process

improvement.


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Our recent InformationWeek Analytics State of Cloud ComputingSurvey showed overall acceptance of these services; just 33% of 607respondents said they wouldnt use off-premises providers, down from48% in our 2010 poll. However, that doesnt tell the whole story. Whenwe broke down those currently using cloud services, 53% said theyveadopted SaaS vs. 28% using infrastructure-as-a-service offerings.

That got us wondering: What piece of the IT infrastructure would be the

first to make the leap? Storage seemed like a good bet; however, our 2011State of Enterprise Storage Survey showed a lot of caution around publicstorage services. Of course, the terms cloud and storage both cover alot of ground. Long-term email archiving is a different beast from disasterrecovery, which is different from application backup. And EMC is differentfrom Joes Cut-Rate Cloud. Still, skepticism rules, so we decided to digdeeper into our readers plans for a range of innovative technologies thatcould help flatten the steep curve of data growth and ease the pressurestorage puts on the IT budget.

In this InformationWeek Analytics report, well discuss the results of that

survey, evaluate where the cloud offers a viable alternative to on-premisesstorageand where it doesntand explore our general lack of adoptionof technologies that could tame the storage beast.

ExecutiveSum

mary


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ResearchSy

nopsis

Survey Name: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage SurveySurvey Date:April 2011Region: North AmericaNumber of Respondents: 363

Purpose:To determine interest in the use of public cloud storage in the enterprise.

Methodology:

InformationWeek Analytics surveyed business technology decision-makersat North American companies. The survey was conducted online, andrespondents were recruited via an email invitation containing an embed-ded link to the survey. The email invitation was sent to qualifiedInformationWeek subscribers.

ABOUT US | InformationWeek Analyticsexperienced analysts arm business technology

decision-makers with real-world perspective based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative

research, business and technology assessment and planning tools, and technology adoption best

practices gleaned from experience.If youd like to contact us, write to managing director Art Wittmann at [email protected],

content director Lorna Garey at [email protected] and research managing editor Heather Vallis

at [email protected]. Find all of our reports at www.analytics.informationweek.com.


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Limitless DataIts not news that storage is weighing down IT budgets. Our InformationWeek Analytics 2011

State of Storage Survey showed the amount of actively managed storage expanding at around

20% per year; we work with a few organizations dealing with growth rates exceeding 50%. At

these levels, most data centers will double storage capacity requirements every two to three

years. And as employees start using multiple mobile devices and consumer applications for

work, that estimate could be conservative.

In our first InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey, 59% of respondents call out

email as the application most responsible for storage growth, followed by increasing demand

from new/planned applications (58%). Slightly fewer, 53%, cite their retention policies as the

driving reason they need to save more data. Seventy-six percent say theyre somewhat or very

concerned about storage costs, and most CIOs we speak with insist theyre actively seeking

ways to reduce expenditures while still keeping data available.

Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals,April 2011

What is your organizations approach to using public cloud storage services?

Approach to Public Cloud Storage Services

We are currently using public

cloud storage services

We have no plans to usepublic cloud storage services

15%We plan to adopt publiccloud storage services withinthe next 12 months

We plan to adopt publiccloud storage services withinthe next 13 to 24 months37%

7%

3%

38%We are currently assessinghow to proceed

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Figure 1


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So you can imagine our surprise that, when asked what theyre spending per gigabyte, nearly

half of our respondents admit they have no clue. Data retention policies are in place, but

enforcement is all over the map. When we asked about strategies that could help lower costs,

we saw a distinct lack of interest. Just 25% plan to adopt any public cloud storage within the

next two years vs. 37% with no plans. Very few are taking advantage of storage virtualization.

Sixty-one percent either make do with the management tools provided by their storage vendors

(53%) or dont actively manage storage resources (8%).

Lets be clear: No vendor is going to show up with a magic multifunction storage ber solution

that will save us from ourselves, and you cant depend on commoditization, either. At large

enterprise clients, were seeing the crushing weight of storage volume growth outstrip the drop-

Impact Assessment: Storage VirtualizationImpact to Benefit Risk

IT Organization

Business Organization

Business Competitiveness

Bottom Line:

Storage virtualization puts an end to

the practice of designing storage arrays around fixed

volume arrangementsand to the stranglehold of

Tier 1 gear vendors. It can simplify disaster recovery

and business continuity and easily add deduplication.

Size matters. We dont expect stor-

age virtualization will ever achieve the adoption levels

of server vir tualization because its just not applicable

to smaller companies, even those with the expertise

to tackle the increased complexity.

Tier 1 storage gear may be expen-

sive, but youre getting support services and value-

added features. The question to ask is, are these niceties

worth the markup, or could those funds be put to bet-

ter use elsewhere?

Storage virtualization may lessen

the granularity of control IT has when it comes to

where data resides, which can present performance

risks and, possibly, security and regulatory worries.

The ability to abstract storage from

underlying hardware means storage virtualization, like

its server kin, can have sizeable benefits to the bottom

line, with ROIs measured in months, not years. It helps

with VDI as well as backup and disaster recovery.

Storage virtualization technologies

have evolved dramatically since the first arrays hit the

market, but even greater changes are yet to come, so

waiting isnt likely to hurt competitiveness. In fact,

waiting might be an advantage.

For enterprises with deep storage expertise, block-level storage virtualization is a logical step in the progression toward a fully virtualized data

center and a way to shed proprietary platforms, with all of the associated heavy lifting and data migration headaches each time a SAN must be

upgraded or replaced. Use of storage hypervisors opens the door to an appealing set of options and is worth looking at if you plan on file or

desktop virtualization or if you want to standardize management of a variety of existing storage systems.


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ping cost of physical medialeading to frustration from the business and limiting IT innova-

tion as much of the budget goes to maintenance costs, specifically storage. Dont dismiss utility

computing, whether internal, external or some mix, as a fadand dont see it as an existential

threat to the way ITs done business for decades, either. Its a tool; for some, storage is probably

the best use case for cloud, while others have legitimate worries. We need to do the hard work

of figuring out the right mix of policies and technologies to balance access, performance vs.

capacity, security, and short- and long-term cost. We need to figure out what, exactly, were

paying per gigabyte for internal storage so we can do an intelligent total cost of ownership

analysis for not only various cloud services but new techs like SSDs, deduplication and storage

virtualization. Is Fibre Channel your future, or is it time to move to Ethernet? Do you need to

revisit your tiering strategy? CIOs must look three to five years out and make sure their pur-

chases today align with their long-term strategies.

And clearly, you cant do that if you dont have a strategy.

Base: 229 respondents at organizations using, planning to adopt or assessing public cloud storage services


How concerned is your organization with the overall cost of on-premises storage?

Degree of Concern With On-Premises Storage Costs

Very concerned; we must dosomething to rein in costs

3%We do not use

on-premises storage

Not at all concerned; we are

satisfied with our current costs

26%

21%

50%Somewhat concerned; costsare higher than we wouldlike, but manageable

R2750511/3

Figure 2


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Lay Down the Law

While vendors talk a lot about dealing with growing data volumes, many CIOs are thinking,

Do we really need all this stuff? In most cases, the answer is yes. Analyzing massive amounts of

data is how mature organizations spot customer trends, dive into analytics and leverage institu-

tional knowledge to solve business problems. While litigation support and regulatory compli-

ance were not the most significant drivers of storage growth in our survey, they surely con-

tribute to the save everything mindset.

A pressing problem is that the forces of cloud, mobility and consumerization are hastening the

demise of the fat corporate desktop as we know it. Our InformationWeek Analytics 2011 End

User Device Management Survey shows 67% of 550 respondents allow email to be accessed via

employee-owned gear, and services like Dropbox are exploding in popularity. What that means

for storage admins is that business content is now located on personal laptops, smartphones

and tablets. This can create real problems for enterprises that wish to exercise a high level of

Base: 223 respondents at organizations using on-premises storage


What are your organizations on-premises storage costs?

On-Premises Storage Costs

.30GB-.50/GB

Less than .10/GB15%

.10/GB-.30/GB

Dont know

.50-.75/GB

.75/GB-$1/GB

Over $1/GB

5%

10%

9%

7%

44%

10%

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Figure 3


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backup, analysis, regulatory and compliance control over data while controlling the costs of

storage. In response, vendors like Asigra and SugarSync have launched business-class off-site

backup protection for mobile devices, and Apples iCloud is worth a look. But you need poli-

cies, not just technology, to solve this problem.

Before even thinking about cloud storage, ensure that data retention rules are clear and ac-

cepted throughout the organization and that they define the types of data that will be stored

and for how long, how quickly you need to get to it and how it will be accessed. Your data

retention policy should be the basis of storage governance and for defining technology require-

ments. Without that base, youre just throwing storage dollars at problems, and the result is

likely to be a depleted budget, underutilized technology and no ability to plan for future

growth.

Its encouraging that 89% of respondents have data retention policies in place, but enforcement



Enterprise database/data warehouse

R&D datasets

Office documents/SharePoint

Rich media (video/audio/imaging)

Email

Web (wiki/blog)

What is your organizations current retention period for the following types of data?

Data Retention Periods

Less than two years Two to five years Five to seven years Eight to ten years Indefinite No policy

R2750511/12

5%

10%

11%

23%

8%10%

12%

10%

15%

28%

6%

23%

18% 5%

7%18%

17%

20%

12%

26%

11%14% 17% 8%

30%

13%

23%

17%

15%

6%

14%

38%

21%

31%

14%

44%

Figure 4


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seems to be a real challengejust 22% say employees comply. Drilling deeper, we also saw that

policies vary by the type of application. Enterprise data warehouses and email stood out as

areas where definitive data retention policies are most likely to exist; R&D data sets and Web

content are least likely to be governed.

But having a policy doesnt necessarily equate to a defined deletion date. We were surprised at

the number of organizations with indefinite data retention requirements for enterprise data-

base/data warehouse and Office documents/SharePointeven though we included up to 10

years as an option. These applications generate a lot of data, and we expect that these policies

will be revisited as full costs become apparent.

We worked with one client that wanted to store all its data for 20 yearsaccessible quickly

(via disk) and indexed for search, so we laid out the cost. After the shock wore off, the com -

pany turned to a tiered approach, introducing more static media and slower access.



How well do employees comply with your organizations data retention policy?

Data Retention Policy Compliance

Somewhat well

Extremely well

11%What data retention policy?

Not very well

22%

18%

49%

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Figure 5


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82%

59%

58%

53%

45%

45%

43%

42%

Note: Multiple responses allowed



Natural growth over time

Email

Increasing demand from new/planned applications

Retention policy

Enterprise database/data warehouse

Increasing demand from existing applications

Rich media (video/audio/imaging)

Increasing demand for customer data

Office documents/SharePoint

Regulatory compliance

Knowledge management/collaboration

Litigation support

R&D datasets

Web (wiki/blog)

Other

41%

32%

31%

22%

20%

20%

2%

Which of the following requirements and/or applications are driving storage growth?

Drivers of Storage Growth

R2750511/9

Figure 6


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Writing data retention policies is a report unto itself, but at minimum, consider how data will

be used by the organization, searched and obtained if needed. That will drive the selection of

storage technology and thus cost. With this understanding of your data and policies around

storage and access, you then can build a long-term enterprise storage plan, including how you

might integrate cloud services into the picture. The trick for cloud storage providers will be to

offer fast access for large amounts of data at prices competitive with tape and off-site storage.

And, oh yeah, securely, with privacy protection guaranteed.

Before considering cloud storage services, be sure you have a good handle on data governance,

that rules are enforceable and that the entire organization has been bought into the policy.

Simply placing data governance policies in a document and storing it on a shelf wont satisfy

regulators. Tools like EMC Centera and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager can assist in the enforce-

ment of organizational and application policies and enable true governance. With Centera, as

an example, you can preserve original content and provide a higher degree of integrity during

the life of your archived information. Using application-based record retention and disposition,

these policies can be enforced within the storage environment, improving corporate accounta-

bility, reducing the costs of e-discovery and enhancing internal controls.

Before making any cloud storage decisions, ensure that your data governance tools can extend

into the providers environment.

You also must ensure you have the ability to manage a mixed environment. The way storage is

typically allocated todaycentrallydoes not make the best use of capacity. For example, lets

say you have 500 GBs of storage. If five business divisions each request 100 GB for their appli-

cations, youve allocated all of your storage, so its time to buy more, right? Thats how many

shops function.

However, its likely that those five business units actually use, on average, 50 GB of their allo-

cated storage, meaning you still have 50% capacity remaining. Or maybe accounting uses just

20%, but manufacturing is constantly running up against its limit. Without the tools to actively

manage usage, you will not have the visibility to determine when you really do need additionalcapacity and where it should go.

Most of our survey respondents, 54%, use vendor-provided utilities to manage their storage

systems. In our experience, these shops are unlikely to have the depth of visibility they need to


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make informed decisions. Especially in multivendor infrastructures, tools like Nexenta Systems

NexentaStor, Quantum StorNext and Quest Foglight Storage that can provide an overall view

into storage allocation and utilization will pay for themselves by helping you delay adding

capacity, while also aiding enforcement of data governance policies.

The Economics of Storage

Our InformationWeek Analytics Cloud ROI Survey showed that the top three reasons companies

are using or evaluating public cloud services are the ability to quickly roll out business technol-

ogy, an expectation that long-term expenses will be lower and to reduce the number of activi-

ties that require in-house IT expertise. Replacing capital expenses with operational expense wasat No. 4.

With respect to storage, those issues are of less concern for enterprises. Like gravity, storage



What tools are used by your organization to manage storage systems?

Tools Used to Manage Storage Systems

Dont know

8%

1%

We do not managestorage resources

Other

Third-party storage resourcemanagement vendors

14%

24%

53%

Tools provided byour storage vendor

R2750511/14

Figure 7


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prices historically have fallen; 21% say theyre not at all concerned with storage costs. Half

say theyre somewhat concerned but see costs as manageable. Buying more storage is a lot

easier than trying to get a handle on how it is used, says the IT director of a global financial

institution.

While this attitude makes hardware vendors happy, it isnt sustainable. Nearly half (44%) of

respondents dont even know the per-gigabyte cost of their on-premises storage, so how can

they know expenditures are manageable? Now, figuring out how much any IT service costs is

tough. We werent surprised that few of the 551 respondents to our End User Device

Management Survey charge back or do cost allocations. Of the 122 who do, 83% charge only

for the purchase price of the device and OS plus software required for the job role. Network

and server assets? Forget itand this is for something as relatively simple as an end-user

device. Its no wonder that breaking down storage is a tall order. Do you include power?

Maintenance and support? Data center floor space?

However, you cant make an informed decision on the financials of outsourcing any given func-

tion until you know about what it costs to deliver internally over three to five years. Data gov-

ernance will help provide this visibility.

Tom Scroggins, an IT architect with a financial services group, pegs his cost per gigabyte at the

high end of our respondents range but goes beyond just the raw disk to include RAID levelsand arrive at a per-usable-gigabyte price, which is cost allocated to business units. Currently

the main benefit of cloud-based storage is variability, Scroggins says. We can provide our own

geographic diversity and can purchase storage as cheap, or cheaper, than the cloud providers

deliver. Hes also constrained by regulatory requirements and says services with sufficient con-

trols to appeal to financial and healthcare institutions are likely a few years away.

If youre moving toward an IT service management structure, you, like Scroggins, likely have a

better-than-average understanding of your environment, but our survey found some knowledge

gaps. And our experience shows that a lack of visibility into elements of a service, such as cost

and utilization, results in IT taking the path of least resistancein this case, buying more on-premises storage. Only by dissecting the technical composition of any given service can you

judge whether youre using the best technology or delivering the service in the most cost-effec-

tive way. In fact, we believe that a greater maturity around service management will be good for

public cloud providers.


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Why Not Go Virtual?

From a technology perspective, 95% of respondents use hard-disk-based systems for their on-

premises storage needs. More than half also use magnetic tape, and optical disks (28%) and

solid-state drives (23%) fill in at the high end to create a tiered environment that can be tailored

to the access demands of various classes of data. Given the comfort bred from long experience

with these technologiesin some cases, decadesand regulatory requirements, it will clearly be

challenging for large enterprises to embrace public storage services. However, given widespread

use of server virtualization, we did expect to see movement toward on-site virtualized storage

systems that negate security and privacy concerns and can still save big bucks. After all, vendors

such as DataCore, FalconStor and StarWind offer flexible, standards-based storage software that

will run on any x86 platform and easily add a software virtualization layer.

Nope. Over the next two years, 60% of respondents expect virtualized storage to make up less

than 25% of their environments; 18% say they wont use virtualized storage at all. Unlike

server virtualization, few in our survey see the value in virtual storage and the ability to create

more dense storage environments.



Direct-attached storage

Network attached storage, on premises

Storage area network, on premises

Private cloud (virtualized) storage

Public cloud storage

What percentage of your overall storage capacity is currently represented by each of the following?

Current Distribution of Storage Capacity

None 1-9 percent 10-24 percent 25-49 percent 50-74 percent 75-99 percent 100 percent

R2750511/10

3%

16%

21%

17%

22%19%

16%

17%

7%

26%

18%

10%

48% 6%

6%61%

25%

21%

8%

4%

11%

17%

18%

8%

5%

16%

11%

19%

2%

2%

7%

4%

5%

3%

1%

Figure 8


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A plurality seems content with the status quo of on-premises, Tier 1 SANs.

Why? One key benefit of outsourcing storage is shifting the burden of capacity and perform-

ance management as well as overall operations and maintenance to the provider. Not so with

internally virtualized environments, where organizations likely believe that benefits dont out-

weigh the cost and effort to deploy and manage. This reflects what were seeing: Only in

extremely large enterprises does the community of users and applications justify the manpower

overhead of a virtualized storage environment.

32 FlavorsOnce you get a handle on your data retention policy and the cost of internally delivered storage

and put management tools in place, you have what you need to analyze the most cost-efficient,

reliable and secure way to deliver the storage services needed by the business. The term cloud

storage is clearly imprecise, so in our poll we drilled down into various aspects, such as back-



Direct-attached storage

Storage area network, on premises

Private cloud (virtualized) storage

Network attached storage, on premises

Public cloud storage

What percentage of your overall storage capacity do you predictwill be represented by each of the following 24 months from now?

Distribution of Storage Capacity in Two Years

None 1-9 percent 10-24 percent 25-49 percent 50-74 percent 75-99 percent 100 percent

R2750511/11

7%

13%

18%

23%

15%18%

29%

9%

22%

22%

13%

20%

19% 16%

10%23%

17%

25%

18%

23%

13%

19%

14%

18%

10%

8%

18%

9%

10%

6%

3%

5%

2%

2%

3%

Figure 9


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up or email archiving or extending on-premises raw storage. Public off-site services can provide

file system access for enterprise applications, creating a hybrid on- and off-premises storage

environment, or be used for email archiving, application disaster recovery, data continuity or

just about any other system. Vendors such as GoGrid, Peer1 and Rackspace are also offering

managed on-site services that make it easier for IT to virtualize storage within the enterprise

data center and provide for scalability and management in a much denser environment. Hybrid

approaches from vendors may combine public and private, allowing for bursting into the

providers data center when capacity is exceeded or running specific applications in a hybrid

environment to improve performance across a highly distributed geographical area.

Even with all these options, our survey found very limited adoption rates. A mere 15% say

theyre using public storage services. An even lower 10% composite say theyre exploring

adopting within the next two years.

Not good news for vendors.

76%

70%

68%

65%

34%

3%




Backup

Disaster recovery/business continuity

File archiving

Email archiving

Primary data storage

Other

What functions have or would you consider moving to public cloud storage?

Functions Moved to Public Cloud Storage

R2750511/8

Figure 10


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73%

54%

36%

31%

28%

27%

23%

23%


Base: 134 respondents at organizations with no plans to use public cloud storage services


Security concerns

Privacy concerns

Regulatory/legal constraints

No concrete business case

Lack of control

Potential data loss

Data availability concerns

Reliability/performance concerns

Vendor lock in

Insufficient network capacity

Long-term TCO (total cost of ownership)

Not well understood

Data portability concerns

Geographic location of service provider

Vendor viability

Too complex

Other

14%

12%

12%

11%

8%

8%

6%

4%

10%

Why isnt your organization adopting public cloud storage services?

Reasons for Not Adopting Public Cloud Storage Services

R2750511/2

Figure 11


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While 38% are still considering how to proceed, 37% have decided that they have no plans to

look outside for storage. While marketing of public clouds is hot, potential buyers are cautious.

So whats the barrier?

Its the same old story: Security, privacy, reliability and performance, potential for data loss, and

availability lead the list of inhibitors. Regulatory and legal constraints are also of great concern

to 39% or respondents.

Those are some pretty big barriers for vendors to overcome.

Most in our survey recognize that providers have the ability to deliver on their promises, withonly 6% responding that vendor viability was a roadblock. The problem is, few can promise

the levels of security needed.

The willingness to store data off site also varies greatly by industryhealthcare, financial, legal

and others may never move to cloud storage. There is too much risk relying on the Internet

and other networks/data centers to store medical imaging and reporting, says Eric Nied, CIO

with Radiology Ltd. From another healthcare IT pro: Availability/uptime is a major concern.

Even recently, Google has experienced multihour outages; this is unacceptable.

Our information is sensitive and highly regulated, adds Billy McDonald, VP of IT with EFederal Credit Union. I can keep it locally, have more control, more security, for less cost, and

simply feel better about it.

Among those open to public storage services, backup, disaster recovery, and file and email

archiving are most likely to be under consideration. When we touched on primary data stor-

age, the numbers fell off dramatically.

Scroggins says he sees smaller companies as the sweet spot for service providers, whose data

protection practices may be an improvement over what an SME could afford on its own. But as

we hear about successful breaches of corporations such as CitiBank, Nasdaq, PBS and Sony, we

cant help but wonder whether large enterprises might want to compare the security a storage

provider like EMC or Hewlett-Packard could provide.


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4.4

4.3

4.3

4.3

4.2

4.1

4.1

4.1

Note: Mean average ratings



Ability to move data between cloud and on-premises storage

On-demand access

Data encryption

Ability to establish/enforce retention policy

Network encryption

Monitoring tools

Compatibility with legacy systems/processes, e.g., Active Directory

SLAs

Reporting (usage and compliance)

Geographic redundancy

Wide support for transfer protocols (SCP, FTP, SAMBA/CIFS, RSYNC)

Native file system support (mount point)

Instant scalability

Integrity policy reporting

Data compression

Deduplication

Limitless scalability

4.0

3.9

3.9

3.9

3.8

3.8

3.7

3.7

3.6

How important are the following features when using or evaluating a cloud storage service?Please use a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not important and 5 is very important.

Importance of Cloud Storage Features

R2750511/7

1 Not at all concerned Very concerned 5

Figure 12


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Bells and Whistles

Respondents moving down the path of outsourced storage named more than 30 vendors as

being in use or under consideration. Not surprising, at the top of the list were longstanding

storage vendors HP and EMC. Amazon S3 was slightly ahead of IBM and Oracle for vendor

consideration. Other names that scored high on the list include Barracuda Backup, Carbonite,

Hitachi, Rackspace Cloud Files and Mozy (owned by EMC), showing the diversity of services

that are on offer, from capacity and software tailored for email archiving, backup or collabora-

tion to raw infrastructure capacity. When considering outsourced storage:

G Drill deep into integration capabilities. No one wants a new silocreating a unified IT

environment and ensuring that you have the ability to freely move data between off- and on-

premises storage is the most critical feature.

G Insist on real-time, on-demand access to data that enhances the business. This includes

unified search.

G Be realistic about regulations. Slinging FUD to avoid considering services is a good way to

95%

53%

28%

25%

2%


Base: 223 respondents at organizations using on-premises storage


Hard disk-based

Magnetic tape-based

Optical disks

Solid-state disk

Other

What types of on-premises storage do you use?Types of On-Premises Storage Used

R2750511/5

Figure 13


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lose credibility. Our biggest concern with public cloud storage is strict laws on retention

polices, says one respondent. A simple policy from the cloud vendor to use deduplication

could break state laws regarding original file source. Now, were not providing legal advice,

but right now a government agency could ask any online service to provide the names of all

users who have a particular file, whether or not the service employs deduplication. So check

with counsel before issuing blanket statements.

G Still, encryption and security must be mastered, no matter where you keep your data.

The current standard is AES-256 bit encryption, but this will add a level of latency when data

is unencrypted back within your environment. In the recent Sony security breach, stored

password credentials used not encryption but a hashwhich can easily be broken. As we

have seen, on-premises does not always equate to strong security. Whether sensitive data

lives in your data center or a providers, make sure its encrypted.

G Make sure your retention and deletion policies will be carried over and enforced. Get

details on the technology used, to understand if a record or backup of data is kept even when

information is removed. Otherwise, e-discovery requests could land you in hot water.

G Monitoring tools should clearly show usage and performance statistics and cost break-

downs and provide a way to export data so you can integrate it into your own reporting tools.

Monitoring systems should also provide visibility into service-level agreements to ensure thatthe provider is performing per the terms of the contract. Since there is a lot to the manage-

ment aspect (SLAs, usage, compliance, integrity reporting, integration) ensure that the inter-

face is easy to useduring an outage is not the time to find out that you cant get insight.

G Mind the where. The Amazon data center outage in April, although a result of a human

configuration error, exposes another issue: geographic redundancy. You must understand how

the providers architecture deals with major disruptions like the one Amazon experienced. As

a result of the outage, we learned that redundancy existed within the data center, but geo-

graphic failover to other locations was not inherent within Amazons design. Understanding

these what-if scenarios is important when selecting a partner. Its not enough to get high-levelinformation; there must be a degree of compatibility that exists between the provider and

your enterprise IT policies. As the vendor changes its environment, you also need to ensure

that you have a formal notification mechanism and the right to conduct regular reviews. The

smaller your organization is, the less willing the vendor will be to accommodate special


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requests, but key considerations will be the geographic location of your data, backup, conti-

nuity of operations, speed to access, application access mechanisms, encryption, physical and

data security policies, and fees and triggers for space and any network bandwidth charges.

G Ensure that you can communicate.You never know what applications will need storage

resources in the future, so when extending your IT infrastructure, ensure that a variety of

communications mechanisms exist. Seamless integration is the ideal, so vendors should pro-

vide for wide support of Web services APIs to enable a service-oriented architecture as well as

transfer protocols such as SCP, Samba and CIFS. A native file system mount point may also

be a requirement.

G Leave room to grow. If you expect a lot of bursting, the ability to quickly and seamlessly

scale the amount of data stored with the provider will be important. This is especially valu-

able for new services and untested applications, where youre uncertain of the amount of

storage capacity needed. The cost of this scalability should be spelled out, along with any

caps or advanced notice required to significantly expand the storage resources consumed. If

you scale up, you also need to be sure you can just as easily scale back down. With many

vendors, adding capacity is easy; removing it is not.

G Compression and deduplication ranked at the bottom of list of desired features. This is

surprising as they directly affect capacity use, and thus cost. Compression rates should bepublished. Remember that not all data compresses well, most notably images, and typically,

encrypted data will not enjoy the same level of compression as unencrypted data. Storage

compression for file and block data is useful, if you have control over how blocks are laid

down on disk.

G Deduplication first gained traction as a technology to enhance disk backup. At a basic level,

deduplication technology examines data and compares it to data thats already stored. If a

duplicate is found, instead of storing that copy, the system establishes a reference point to the

original data. Significantly less space is needed to establish a link than to physically store the

file. Public storage providers embed compression and deduplication technology into theirofferings to drive their costs as low as possible.


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4.6

4.6

4.4

4.4

4.2

4.0

4.0

3.9

Note: Mean average ratings



Data security

Privacy

Reliability/performance

Potential data loss

Data availability

Network capacity

Lack of control

Regulatory/legal constraints

Vendor viability

Long-term TCO (total cost of ownership)

Vendor lock in

Data portability

Geographic location of service provider

Complexity of the technology

3.9

3.9

3.9

3.8

3.4

3.4

How concerned are you with each of the following factors when using public cloud storage?Please use a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not at all concerned and 5 is very concerned.

Public Cloud Storage Concerns

R2750511/6

1 Not at all concerned Very concerned 5

Figure 14


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Vendor Choices

Amazon offers a number of storage services, with varying degrees of performance and the ability

to map back to defined tiers. The Simple Storage Service is highly scalable and available and

designed for mission-critical primary storage. With it Amazon is targeting NAS and SAN replace-

ment or augmentation. S3 may be most useful for big-data storage as there is no need to partition

data into containers. For large-scale analysis and business intelligence this is extremely valuable.

EMC Atmos can be deployed in a hybrid environment. One of the most interesting elements

of Atmos is intelligent policy-based management. Embedded policies will distribute content

based on business rules and data values. For example, information that is current and classified

as valuable may be defined premium and therefore require more copies in more locations

than information that is older and accessed less frequently. The older information may be com-

pressed and retained with fewer copies in fewer locations. While IT must still define the poli-

cies, Atmos can trigger them proactively (and automatically) or reactively, based on changing

business conditions or characteristics of the content. In highly distributed geographic environ-

ments, EMCs GeoMirror capability can create multiple copies of an object and distribute them

to multiple locations, while the GeoParity capability divides objects into segments and distrib-

utes them to designated locations. These RAID-like and mirroring features can be invaluable for

protecting critical data.

Hitachis focus is on dynamically adding virtual storage directors, ports, cache and capacity toa control chassis. Its systems are designed to support increased demand in virtualized server

environments by dynamically combining multiple control chassis into a logical system with

shared resources. Partitioning of cache, ports and access control based on resource group might

help organizations focus on quality of services Hitachi also extends its Virtual Storage Platform

by supporting multiple hypervisors.

In one of the most expensive acquisitions of 2010, Hewlett-Packard acquired 3Par as the

crown jewel of its storage service platform. Like many big vendors, HP is seeking to create inte-

grated systems across private, public and hybrid environments. In its CloudSystem, the compa-

ny places a big focus on automating management and provisioning across storage and otherinfrastructure and application elements. The architecture allows a single HP 3Par Utility

Storage system to serve as a consolidation platform to deliver the storage performance and

quality of service needed for diverse workloads. Its not inexpensive but can represent a savings

over architecting a hybrid system in-house.


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Some lesser-known vendors are also working to differentiate themselves. Cleversafe created

Information Dispersal Algorithms for slicing data into unrecognizable pieces and dispersing it

across multiple locations. By using this kind of encryption and sharing, the company says

enterprises can secure massive amounts of data. The speed to read the data is highly dependent

on your network links. The best speeds achieved in tests on gigabit networks is about 40

Mbps, although some users reported similar access times on slower networks.

For on-premises virtualized storage, increased density is the trend. Nexsans systems include

3-TB SATA drives180 TBs in 4U of rack space. With ITs focus on higher throughput, scaling

36%

27%

18%

16%

13%

7%

4%

20%


Base: 55 respondents at organizations using third-party storage resource management vendors


Quantum StorNext

CA/Nimsoft

Quest Foglight Storage

NexentaStor

DataCore SANsymphony

Balesio AG Fileminimizer

GlusterFS

Other

Dont know7%

What storage resource management vendors do you use?

Storage Resource Management Vendors Used

R2750511/15

Figure 15


29/36





and interoperability, vendors will continue to push the envelope for high-density, high-perfor-

mance systems. For smaller companies, Cteras Cloud Attached Storage combines off-site stor-

age with on-premises appliances, promising enterprise-grade performance without many of the

deployment and maintenance concerns involved with a hybrid system.

Your Strategy

For large enterprises, we expect storage service vendors will become just another tier, used for

specific needs. How extensive that use is depends on how well vendors reassure CIOs on secu-

rity and availability. Another roadblock: We have yet to see a product that does a good job

managing a hybrid, multivendor set of enterprise storage as a single unified environment.

Still, we have to do something. It was only a few years ago that we learned to talk about giga-

bytes; we have now progressed to terabytes and petabytes. Our 2011 State of Storage Survey

found that 9% of respondents already have more than a petabyte of data under management.

How long will it be before we start talking in terms of exabytes, zettabytes and yottabytes? A

few years? A few months?

No one knows for sure, but that time will inevitably come. The existence of such huge

amounts of data has become a hot-button issue for many enterprises, and off-site storage will

likely play some role in the overall strategy.

While a data retention policy is a big part of the equation, you must also get a handle on the

amount of data handled by your organization and the rate at which data is accumulating. In

one client, we saw 80% growth rate per year. Remember, when you buy a SAN, you know

what it costs. When you hire a provider, you also need to know what the service youre con-

tracting for will cost over three to five years.

Security, from a data protection as well as a privacy perspective, costs money. Its expensive to

do internally and for providers. Apply risk-management principles, just as you would when

deciding what level of redundancy makes sense for any given data type.

With a handle on security, seek to create a single pool of virtualized block, file and content

storage resources to support diverse uses. This might involve private, public and hybrid

options. A key success factor will be to build the system at your own pace and in a way that


30/36





best addresses your needs and leverages your existing IT investments. Watch words are reliabil-

ity, scalability, multitenancy and multitiering. To gain greater performance, integrate search,

migration and archiving capabilitiesbe sure to develop requirements before considering ven-


Base: 92 respondents at organizations using or planning to adopt public cloud storage services


HP

EMC

Amazon S3

IBM

Oracle

Barracuda Backup

Carbonite

Hitachi

Rackspace Cloud Files

Mozy

CTERA

Eucalyptus

3X Systems

Axcient

Google

JoyentCloud

Mezeo

Nasuni

Symform

Zetta

Egnyte

GoGrid

Intronics

Vembu

Other

We have not evaluated vendors yet

What cloud storage vendors are in use, or are being considered for use, at your organization?

Cloud Storage Vendors

30%

26%

25%

21%

16%

14%

14%

10%

8%

6%

5%

5%

3%

3%

3%

3%

3%

3%

3%

3%

2%

2%

2%

2%

26%

14%

R2750511/16

Figure 16


31/36





dors. That said, you also need to ensure that a cloud migration doesnt force you to replace or

rewrite your applications. We often see clients wrestle with legacy applications that do not sup-

port virtualized servers or virtualized storage. A few outliers are manageable, but if number of

important applications fall into this category, you wont achieve the full benefits of cloud stor-

age. For now, consider other use cases and workloads. When you go through a technology

refresh and update or eliminate problematic applications, reconsider a hybrid on- and off-

premises storage architecture.

Unfortunately, instead of legacy devices inheriting cloud attributes, we see organizations exam-

ining the cloud as just another storage silo. Needless to say, this is the wrong approach.


32/36





Appe

ndix


Which of the following dollar ranges includes the annual revenue of your entire organization?

Company Revenue

$6 million to $49.9 million

Dont know/decline to say

18%

Less than $6 million

$5 billion or more

$1 billion to $4.9 billion

Government/non-profit




8%

12%

10%

5%

12%

10%

10%

15%

R2750511/18

Figure 17


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Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals,

April 2011

Approximately how many employees are in your organization?

Company Size

100-499

Less than 50 28%

50-99

10,000 or more

5,000-9,999

500-999

1,000-4,999

5%

5%

12%

8%

21%

21%

R2750511/20

Figure 18


34/36





2%

4%

2%

15%

2%

11%

14%

8%


Construction/engineering

Consulting and business services

Distributor

Education

Electronics

Financial services

Government

Healthcare/medical

Insurance/HMOs

IT vendors

Logistics/transportation

Manufacturing/industrial, non-computer

Non-profit

Telecommunications/ISPs

Utilities

Other

4%

7%

2%

7%

3%

4%

3%

12%

What is your organizations primary industry?

Industry

R2750511/19

Figure 19


35/36





37%

10%

8%

7%

5%

5%

4%

3%


IT/IS staff

Director/manager, IT or infrastructure

Director/manager, other IT

Director/manager, IT operations

CIO

Consultant

Director/manager, network systems

Line-of-business management

Vice president, IT or infrastructure

CEO/president

CSO (chief security officer)/security management

Security staff

Other

3%

3%

2%

2%

11%

Which of the following best describes your job title?

Job Title

R2750511/17

Figure 20


36/36




Want More Like This?Making the right technology choices is a challenge for IT teams everywhere. Whether

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Research: Storage & File Virtualization:Storage virtualization enables IT to eliminatestorage volumes with hard characteristics, while file virtualization is about abstracting

the link between files themselves and their references. The result? Freedom for IT

and usersfrom regimented storage structures. Whats not to like?

Research: 2011 Outsourcing Survey:Were not willing to fight to hire talent, optinginstead to outsource more and more. Yet, were also not investing in the management

tools and skills needed to deliver top-notch services from this hodgepodge of cloud,

SaaS and conventional providers and internal IT assets.

Research: 2011 State of Cloud: Our 2011 cloud computing survey shows healthygrowth in use of these services. But are IT teams neglecting their bread-and-butterfundamentals?

Strategy: Unified Computing Stack Wars: The fight is on for hegemony in next-gen datacenters as vendors including HP, IBM and Cisco erase the boundaries among server,

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