Cloud storage: Do not ignore hidden costs

The pricing of cloud storage is the same as the pricing of some tools. For a long time, almost all manufacturers are repeating the same slogan: "Users only pay for what they use." The price range for public cloud storage is 12% to 25% per gigabyte a month.

51cto.com reminds you that the real cost-saving aspects of cloud storage can be tied to the ability to solve the incidental cost of enterprise users because they need to store their own data in the cloud. "Some companies that need to manage their data find they can get out of the data center, and they are gradually beginning to yield and cloud storage," he said. "If you don't need space, power and cooling requirements, then it doesn't matter if the storage price is cheap," said Terri McClure, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. Starting to move data into the cloud is a better and cheaper alternative than building a new datacenter. ”

Dragon Slayer Consultancy, headquartered in Oregon State Beaverton, specializes in IT management consulting, and its president, Marc Staimer, says the best way to calculate storage costs is to get a detailed inventory of the costs involved, including power consumption and cooling costs, Annual license fee or storage software costs, and cost of data center footprint and security issues. All of these costs, along with other costs, are what he calls "the cost of storage to bear".

"The traditional approach is to count the storage costs per gigabyte that are rapidly dropping. "In fact, the traditional approach is completely wrong," Staimer in a 2008 report comparing the performance and price of Nirvanix's cloud storage services and internal storage. In general, the storage costs that most data centers need to bear per gigabyte are actually increasing, or the best things can only be maintained in a flat state. This is because hard drive procurement costs account for only a fraction of the total storage costs that businesses need to bear. ”

Schumacher Group specializes in emergency medicine management and staff placement, always located in Louisiana Lafayette, the company's chief information officer Douglas Menefee said the cost reduction is one of the main reasons people migrate trillions of of bytes of data into the cloud, which is what he is working on. "However, SAN storage costs have fallen and we cannot compete with the purchasing power of emerging cloud storage providers." "he said.

"But cloud storage providers do need to simplify their pricing patterns," Menefee added. "While cloud storage pricing is still a vague concept, soon people will be aware of the ' formula ' used behind the price they give." ”

Another thing to consider when weighing how much cloud storage can cost people is to understand the life of your existing storage devices.

"One reason why many businesses cannot migrate immediately to the cloud is that they still operate in the same environment where most of the equipment has been devalued," said Mark Tonsetic, project manager for the Executive Council's infrastructure Implementation Board. ”