Storage remains integral to cloud migration
Tharanya Govender, Business Development Manager NetApp at Westcon-Comstor
The global hybrid cloud market is expected to top $145 billion by 2026, signifying just how important the approach to combining multiple cloud environments has become to future business operations. But one aspect of the transition to the hybrid cloud that seems to be neglected is that of storage.
As more workloads move toward the cloud and applications are developed to capitalise on this, storage hardware and infrastructure are falling by the wayside.
Unlike the cloud and digital transformation, storage is not seen as a sexy buzzword. And yet, the databases, applications, and workloads generate the data that power company growth, whether on-premises or in the cloud. The secret sauce to facilitate this is storage.
Storage foundation
Storage infrastructure or services form the foundation on which any successful cloud project is completed. Even in the rush to digitally transform following the events of the past two years, local companies should never forget how critical their storage environments are to enable this transition.
Essentially, the storage infrastructure dictates what features and functions a business can access, how much performance can be achieved, and how much resilience and durability are possible.
Suppose the underlying storage layer is weak or insecure. In that case, significant inefficiencies and protection gaps start emerging that dramatically impact the company’s success and ability to scale according to customer demand.
Deciding factors
Making a poor decision when it comes to storage, especially as how it relates to the hybrid cloud, can have significant business consequences. Unfortunately, these are usually only discovered too late to make changes quickly and cost-effectively.
This could potentially result in the company not being able to scale. Or to do so only by engaging in an extensive rip and replace exercise that is not only time-consuming but costly as well.
If the cloud environment is unable to deliver on the performance, availability, and recoverability goals the business has set out to achieve, then why embark on such a significant project in the first place?
As part of this, local businesses must consider having a flexible consumption cost model to avoid getting locked into a specific cloud provider. Having the freedom to allocate data resources across a diverse ecosystem of multiple infrastructure environments is one of the most significant advantages of going the hybrid route.
Going omnipresent
The golden thread tying all this together is data. Data can no longer be limited by reliance on a heterogenous storage service. While this can work in multiple environments, it is not something that is built in by design into those instances.
Instead, it is about creating a way for storage to become omnipresent, multi-protocol, secure, efficient, immutable, resilient, and scalable data. An omnipresent storage service is already within multiple cloud and on-premises environments.
Because this omnipresent data storage approach is multi-protocol, it ensures wide coverage of data services regardless of systems, use cases, cloud providers, and so on. Future-proofing this storage foundation delivers any business the versatility and freedom of choice that developers and users have come to expect of a digitally driven business environment.
Security by design
In the wake of more sophisticated cyberattacks, security has become one of the most crucial factors impacting technology decisions and adoptions. Even though cloud providers are secure, this is limited to their infrastructure. An organisation must still get the data into that environment.
Proper storage is essential in this regard. The best environment features built-in ransomware detection and prevention while providing an effective defence against cyberattacks in real time. These benefits must also not compromise performance, especially when accessing storage in the cloud. Efficiencies like compaction, compression, deduplication, and tiering all combine to create a smaller footprint that is more cost-effective.
Think of it as consuming less physical disk surface area, which is what cloud providers bill you for consuming. It is also inherently faster performing.
Fundamentally, companies need to have a more effective way of delivering on their journey to a hybrid, multi-cloud environment. Having access to built-in automation and data protection features while still managing the critical storage layer as securely as possible will create a supportive platform where data can be accessed from anywhere with the confidence that it is available and resilient.