Parsing: Can cloud storage completely replace storage networks?

A report from Forrester, titled "Enterprise users are not ready to use cloud storage", expressed scepticism about the willingness of companies to entrust their key data to the cloud.

The report notes that while "IT professionals are eager to take advantage of the low cost per gigabyte provided by cloud providers ... But the data from Forrester's hardware survey shows that it's just a matter of saying so far. Respondents from companies located in different regions and sizes seem to have little interest in moving their data to the cloud quickly. While storage service has a long-term potential, Forrester sees problems with guaranteed service levels, security, chain of custody, shared leases, and long-term pricing as major hurdles that must be addressed before cloud computing can actually take off. ”

The authors of the report, Forrester analyst Andrewreichman, are not the only ones seeing cloud computing's uncertain future.

Corporate cloud does not appear in long-term forecasts

"Companies that rely on public cloud services for their long-term roadmap are very scarce," said Jeffboles, senior analyst at Tanejagroup. The cloud may be used to start a service to help it perform and mature, but in the long run the enterprise often reclaims the service internally so that it can better improve and control such aspects as latency, connectivity, DR (disaster recovery), and security. ”

Boles also points out that cloud computing differs from keeping data in the public cloud-and that the cloud fits the latter.

"When you don't need to access data in calculations, the data store in the cloud is really perfect and practical," he says. The cloud becomes an ideal, highly protected, resilient database for storing infrequently accessed archived data. ”

When deciding whether to keep your data inside the company or in a cloud that is externally protected, Boles advises it decision-makers to study several issues before making a decision:

※ Total cost of data retention period

※ The difference between the cost and the access mode of the internal solution and the external solution. "For example, if an external cloud such as Nirvanix SDN replicates data between 5 different data centers, and the 5 centers are closer to the end user than your private datacenter, an internal solution may be more delayed than an external solution," he said. ”

※ your confidence in the openness of external cloud services and the direction of the road map. "Do you believe that if necessary, data will be extracted and transferred to other providers," Boles said. Do you believe that the provider provides this service or product as a core service, and that the roadmap will not be subject to any other needs traction? For example, if a product is provided by a provider as a product or service, Do service customers or product customers have a greater impact on the roadmap?

Boles also advises users to investigate hidden costs and overall management before making a decision.

Although Boles is not very optimistic about the long-term use of the cloud, he sees a glimmer of hope.

"The benefit of cloud services is that they provide opportunities that they didn't have before, and eventually have enough interoperability within the infrastructure to allow users to mix the public cloud with the proprietary cloud," he said. As the appropriate proprietary infrastructure is deployed (such as VMware), a select set of features can be delivered to the public cloud, and the cost can be optimized and the complexity of the shift to the public cloud reduced by handing over a select set of features.