Hybrid Cloud Storage: The Best Of Both Worlds
By Cheryl Knight, contributing writer
A 2014 Current Analysis poll of more than 600 IT decision makers around the world reveals 58 percent of those polled use a private cloud and 28 percent use a hybrid cloud storage solution. Current Analysis, a provider of market intelligence and advice, states in a news release, “These results mirror the concerns of respondents who overwhelmingly listed ‘security’ and ‘data privacy’ as their top two issues when undertaking a cloud initiative.”
The company also points out that a strong private cloud strategy enables your IT clients to leverage a public cloud for non-critical data, creating a “hybrid solution that offers the best of both worlds.”
The Business Solutions article “Mixing Private, Public Cloud Storage” also touches on this subject. And according to Justin Moore, CEO of Axcient, “Cloud-based data storage is really just a commodity, not a service. It provides the illusion of protecting a business but misses the point of preventing downtime.” IT solutions providers should focus on — instead of only security —solutions that meet their clients’ recovery time objectives.
In the article, Matt Jorgensen, director of marketing and product management at Equus Computing Solutions states, “Combining backup in a local private cloud scheme allows for quicker data recovery in the event of a data-loss incident and is an opportunity for MSPs (managed services providers) to offer additional value beyond just offloading data and computing to a public cloud.”
This article also points out MSPs can host private clouds and offer storage partitioned from other customers’. Peter Howard, vice president of worldwide channel strategy and sales at NetApp comments, “Many of NetApp’s top resellers have shifted their business models from being primarily product-focused to a mix of product and professional services. They are becoming services-led, positioning themselves as trusted advisors to their customers, both at building private clouds as well as delivering advisory services on when, why, and how to migrate workloads to MSPs.”