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In the first quarter of 2010, we created a 4-phased Cloud Storage Maturity Model which still makes complete sense in 2012. The market is finding the way forward, following the blueprint we described almost to a T.

With our cloud storage maturity model in mind, here are some thoughts on the trends we're seeing this year. What we're describing is the State of Cloud Storage in 2012:

• The rise of a new application delivery architecture

We think this year everyone will figure out that cloud storage is not just cheap storage via the web, but the delivery of a new application architecture, whereby applications are fully contained on a variety of devices (smartphones, tablets and PCs) and the backend is a cloud data store with REST APIs. 

• The consumerization of everything

Enterprises as well as large institutions will seek alternatives to allowing their employees to use consumer tools like DropBox as well as alternatives to tools like box that still store data (albeit encrypted) in a public cloud (i.e. Amazon S3). This trend, aptly named the "consumerization of IT" is creating many alternatives that provide more security, and integration with key corporate support tools.  Cloud Storage is a key enabler of the consumer tools that have found favor with early and wide adoption, so look for the successful entrants with enterprise class security to be based on cloud technologies, and stored behind private firewalls so that the solutions will be as attractive to end users as the consumer tools, but that IT can control the security of their confidential corporate data and compliance initiatives.

• Disintermediation of services
  

The disintermediation of telcos and device manufacturers will continue, with the most cogent example being Apple delivering text messaging "off network" via iCloud.   Already, with devices using WiFi, from multiple suppliers, a storage cloud is a key enabler of these services.

• Manageability

Storage cloud manageability will grow as a requirement as the storage clouds get larger.  Storage clouds will become a delivery vehicle for highly complex management schemes focused on storage tiering. Let's talk ITIL in the Cloud.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens of the Cloud, the enterprise is ready for cloud storage. Let us know what you think.

There are multiple productive and desirable use cases for cloud storage for the enterprise.  This spans many use cases, including specialized applications that use programmable API cloud storage, file server replacement solutions, backup and archive solutions and what we call "Personal Cloud Storage."  (Personal Cloud Storage, or PCS, is the use of PC, tablet, mobile clients and web browsers by an individual to access a pool of storage.)  As opposed to a long discussion about all these, let's focus for a moment on the phenomena of the "consumerization" of IT and what if really means in the context of enterprise IT, and specifically as it relates to PCs.

The enterprise continues to register significant concerns about using public, multi-tenant storage offerings, primarily because of the "triple threat" of risk:  unauthorized access, data loss, and the opportunity for enforced access by government institutions.  In addition to the triple threat, employees are beginning to expect the enterprise IT organization to be as responsive to their needs as they know public storage service providers can and will be.  This includes easy and immediate provisioning of whatever amount of storage is required, on a pay as you go basis, at a fair price, on all your devices, and what is now represented as the consumerization of IT.

So, what's the appropriate response for the enterprise IT organization?  I believe there are three responses forming up:  

1)    We can't stop it, so let's publish acceptable usage policies and hope for the best;
2)    Just say no - you cannot do that - and then try to control it; and,
3)    Obtain an alternative that is better controlled and delivered by a trusted service provider as a "private" or "hybrid" cloud solution for your institutions use, and/or implement an in-house solution.

At Mezeo, we saw this coming and we strongly believe that the third option listed above is the appropriate response.  It recognizes the need for self service provisioning of required storage solutions along with multiple access points, but puts in place appropriate controls to avoid the triple threat.  

In Standardized Cloud APIs? Yes, Don Macvittie takes on the opposing view held by editor Mike Fratto in Standardizing Cloud APIs Is Useless.

Gentlemen, you are both right.

In a previous blog entry, I noted the following:

One last comment on this business of vendor lock in and cloud storage APIs (another focus of the OpenStack announcement).  I would submit that, while a specific set of APIs has the potential to create vendor lock in, this is a much smaller problem than what is experienced in other technologies.  If you are really worried about it, you probably have never actually written a REST API call.  It is written in many languages, and we have seen cases where applications that run on S3 run unchanged on Mezeo.  Others need very minor modifications, and some are excited to take advantage of some of the unique Mezeo API based services.  It just is not a problem, and this is much more related to FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and marketing zealotry than it is associated with technological reality.  The APIs of choice will shake out, and it is far too early to say if it will be S3, OpenStack, CDMI or a combination of all of these and others yet unknown. 

At Mezeo, we have never believed there will be one winner, and instead focused on architecture to enable easy and effective delivery of whichever APIs stand the test of time. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API enables advanced services and programmatic access to Mezeo enabled storage clouds.   The Mezeo Interoperability API enables interoperability of applications developed for Amazon S3, Google and Eucalyptus based storage clouds. 

(Note:  we are soon announcing our first addition to the Interoperability API that will deliver the SNIA CDMI data management capability).

The interesting view that seems to be missing here is that marketplace competition by service providers already serves to drive down the price of cloud storage, so a commoditized stack embraced by most is unlikely to yield extraordinary incremental savings.  At the same time, while the competitive market conspires to drive cloud storage costs ever lower, the need to differentiate, and deliver solutions as well as a programmable storage to enable multiple new and exciting types of applications will rapidly replace the pure cost and scale focus of current cloud storage offerings.  Sometimes, the "new" application is simply enabling it in the cloud, to produce the same result at a lower cost!  This requires significant cloud storage functionality in order to make this easy and productive.  Amazon continues to prove this with their many additions and capabilities which differentiate their service.  Mezeo sees much the same view on the part of our customers.  Their focus is on what cloud storage can do, the problems it can solve, what business opportunities it creates and what new applications it enables.  All of these views assume it will be competitively priced.

So, should we ultimately and will we ultimately achieve some sort of "standardized" API for cloud storage and cloud computing?  YES! 

What benefits will it bring?  The usual ones we expect from standardization. 

Will it be a panacea and a reason to buy?  No, but it will ultimately be a reason not to buy.

Is it the most important thing all of us in the cloud space can do right now?  No, but supporting the standards bodies is, and your suppliers should have a position on that. 

I like practical business approaches.  That is why we try to look at cloud storage through the lens of what it can be used for, why that makes sense and why it is a big business opportunity.  We developed our Interoperability API to make it easy for cloud storage solution providers to use Mezeo enabled clouds.  We built the Mezeo API to provide a robust development environment for programmable storage.  Both are important.  We did not do either one to get engaged in the "which API will prevail" struggle for becoming a standard.  We support CDMI, and are beginning to utilize it where it makes sense and adds real business value. 

I would like to close by saying that standardization will be important, it will never be perfect and it is going to take some time.  In the meantime, what I do know is that there are excellent ways to use cloud storage to solve real business problems in new ways that will yield substantial business improvements, including savings.  If you are worried about vendor lock in, get your top technical people together and do two things:

1)    Make sure that you understand that converting from one API to another, while not the most productive or best use of time, is simply not that big a deal and;

2)    Remember that there are big market forces at work here, and that your cloud storage service suppliers will be bound as much by those versus being protected by their proprietary APIs!

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CLOUD STORAGE: A BUSINESS MODEL for THE ENTERPRISE

Enterprises are increasingly looking to on-premise private storage clouds as a cost-effective way to share information.  Why?  A cloud behind the firewall enables users to easily access, share and collaborate without compromising data security, integrity and availability.  But there are still a few points every enterprise needs to consider before making the decision.

1. Consider your security needs.  How private is a private cloud?  How confidential is the data that you may ultimately store in the cloud?  Do you want the cloud behind your firewall, and if so, how will you access it?  Will you open a port and depend on a user id and password for access control, or will you also require that your cloud is accessed via a VPN?  Remember, today an employee can decide to email a confidential file to someone outside of the firewall, so what do you really accomplish with a "private cloud"?  If the cloud is available thru a port, can you monitor the cloud and shut it down when (not if) it comes under attack?  If the data being stored cannot be compromised then it cannot be on a network, at all.
   
   
2. Make sure you have adequate internal resources.  Do you have the scale, expertise and data center space to host your own private storage cloud and will you save money versus public, multi tenant storage clouds?  Assuming that your analysis of number (1) above suggests that a private cloud is a desirable approach, then our experience is that you can host your own cloud for an identified operational cost that is at least as low as the public provider.  Now, if it forces you to accelerate capital consumption in order to build out a data center, it may be a poor decision.  But all those sorts of things being equal, you can do it.  The intangible costs, like unanticipated headaches, dilution of focus on your scarce resources, and or a poor choice of cloud infrastructure can quickly turn a winner into a loser.
   
   
3. Identify a use case before starting.  A common mistake that we see is the extraordinary focus on the technology as opposed to a focus on your cloud storage use case and the business case that surrounds the use case.  The project should start with an analysis of the use case and its resulting impact on the business, and operate on the assumption you can source a cloud of appropriate size, scalability and costs.
   
   
4. Research technology solutions that are most appropriate for your use case. When you take the use case approach, you will quickly understand that a private cloud is not just a storage infrastructure; but rather an ecosystem of cloud storage clients, backup and archive solutions, special purpose data movers, management and support, that, when combined with a cloud storage infrastructure gives you a complete solution.  Once again, a use case focus will flush this out, versus a platform technology led process.
   
   
5. Integrate cloud storage with your overall cloud computing strategy.  A storage cloud is simply one layer of a cloud computing stack.  How does this cloud fit within your cloud computing stack?  Does the way in which you integrate it support the other cloud computing decisions you have made?  Evaluation of the cloud storage solution and how it will interact with, support and/or be the infrastructure associated with your overall computing cloud is a critical part of your overall evaluation.  You may also choose to use a service provider hosted "private cloud" to solve issues associated with your deployment, and not ever deploy the storage part of a compute cloud within your own data center.   

And finally, you may want to check out our FREE TOOLKIT >>
CLOUD STORAGE: A BUSINESS MODEL for THE ENTERPRISE

Just read David Linthicum's post, A way out of the private cloud dead end. 

We discussed the advent of hybrid cloud in our earlier post on a maturity model for cloud storage. While it is important that technology providers are beginning to grapple with the requirements to move seamlessly from a private cloud to a public cloud, the assumption here is that the workload owner is willing to utilize a public cloud multi-tenant solution for their workload.  I'm not sure we're there yet.

It is unclear to me that the marketplace and especially the higher end enterprises  (who retain and own significant IT resources and data centers) are yet willing to embrace public multi-tenant clouds.  I know they'll eventually do so as the security solutions and their early experiences improve confidence in the public cloud.  Certainly there are non proprietary workloads that will be used for the earliest testing.  However, this is still a very nascent market, and you should expect that we have several years of work ahead of us to build out a fully functioning hybrid model that provides appropriate security and control.

I strongly agree that the level of activity is reminiscent of the late nineties.  The majors are trying to build out their cloud stacks, and they are doing that with internal development and by buying smaller companies focused on individual layers of the stack, or even a feature on the layer.  I looked at some "gee whiz" numbers from various research organizations, and saw that IDC postulates that more than one third of all digital information created on an annual basis will reside in, or at least pass through, the cloud at some point in its life cycle. 

Amazing!

On July 19, 2010, Rackspace led the announcement of OpenStack, with a goal of creating an open source cloud software solution for use on industry-standard hardware.  The initial releases contemplate solutions for both cloud compute and object storage.  While these are the first two releases, they are separate offerings.  Remember, cloud storage is not just the storage target for cloud computing, it is one potential storage target for cloud computing, and is in and of itself a stand alone cloud offering of programmable storage.

Now, I have purposely used a term from the clothing industry, "off the rack", to spend a moment looking at a framework for evaluating the opportunities this may present.  With dress shirts, you can buy off the rack, semi custom, or custom, each with a unique value proposition based on fit, choice and cost.   Interestingly enough, this may be a good lens through which to consider the possibilities of OpenStack, and in particular, OpenStack Object Storage.

Rackspace has made no secret of its motivations for leading this initiative, and its desire to focus on "fanatical" service as it's key differentiator versus the fundamental technology on which the service is based.  Fair enough, and so the question becomes, is the rapidly emerging and immature cloud marketplace already "mature" enough to seek homeostasis?  (Homeostasis is the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition.)  Have enough models and innovations, from startups, academia, open source movements and large tech companies, been tested in the marketplace to the extent that we can already race to the common denominator?  Perhaps now is a good time to start, as long as you are willing to acknowledge that the desired results are a good ways off.

Before we jump off into "Off the Rack" software, a quick look back at open source is helpful.  For more reading on the open source software industry a good introduction is The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Six things are particularly interesting: 

1. An open source alternative can emerge as a follow on to a successful commercial technology and can become pervasive versus the commercial offerings it succeeded (LINUX versus UNIX is the reference case here).
   
2. A second result of this approach can also end up with a big success, although in more of a niche than a pervasive replace for the earlier commercial offerings (MySQL versus Oracle, IBM and Microsoft in the relational data base space).  
   
3. An open source effort can also emerge earlier in a technology cycle and come of age as a pervasive solution (Apache Web Server comes to mind here).
   
4. Open source generally requires very careful cultivation of the community of developers, with active interest by academia (and partnering with NASA is part of the formula here).  Commercially sponsored open source efforts are becoming more common, although it as of yet has not been proven as the typical "breeding ground" for most great open source successes.  Eucalyptus, with its roots at University of California Santa Barbara, seems to be a more traditional route.
   
5. Open source is not necessarily reflective of rapid commercial opportunities for success.  Eucalyptus is obviously beginning to maneuver towards a repeat of the commercialization model.  OpenStack is taking the approach most favored by other open source successes like Apache.  A couple of good reads here are this article from BusinessWeek and this. See also Derrick Harris' post over at GigaOm.
   
6. There are also hundreds of thousands of open source projects that had mixed success or languished altogether. A quick look at  SourceForge (an open source project hosting site) shows nearly a quarter million hosted projects. How many of these have languished or had little impact on the market.
   

So, the first issue is that there will exist for some time to come a real question as to the adoption potential of OpenStack.   I believe that adoption is driven by applicability to need.  In a moment we will address a serious issue which OpenStack Object Storage must overcome to be successful, at best, and at worst, will confine it to a niche market.  My views are very much directed at the Object Storage offering, versus the compute offering, which I believe exists in a different space and as a different type of solution.  With this backdrop, let's have a look at the cloud storage marketplace today, and use the analogy of off the rack, semi custom and custom:

• Off the Rack:  implement as is, one size fits all, each with unique approaches for performance, scalability, bit integrity, may or may not provide geo services.
• Semi Custom:  Select from storage types (DAS, SAN, NAS, JBOD), shared or distributed file systems and object systems, mix and match storage for different SLA and cost/usage patterns on the same infrastructure, multiple APIs, meta data and catalog abstracted from storage layer, geo services.
• Custom:  Generally a service only offering and not available as deployable infrastructure, specifics will vary widely based on service provider offering strategy.
  

Infrastructure	Type	Comments
Eucalyptus	Off the Rack	Limited S3 APIs
OpenStack	Off the Rack	CloudFiles APIs
Scality	Off the Rack	S3 APIs
Mezeo	Semi Custom	Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API and Interoperability API
NetApp	Off the Rack	Bycast APIs, NetApp storage
EMC Atmos	Off the Rack	Atmos ReST APIs, EMC storage
Service	Type	Comments
Amazon S3	Custom	S3 APIs
Microsoft Azure	Custom	Windows centric
Rackspace	Off the Rack	Is the basis for OpenStack
Nirvanix	Custom	SOAP APIs, multi node
Google	Custom	Offers S3 APIs
AT&T Synaptic	Off the Rack	Based on EMC Atmos
OpSource, SoftLayer, Layered Tech and others	Custom	Based on Mezeo

As you can see from the summary above, there exist as many views of what constitutes either a cloud storage service or a desirable cloud storage deployable infrastructure as there are service providers and vendors.  Note that a semi custom infrastructure results in a "custom" service as implemented.  "Off the rack" results in very similar services by those who utilize the same infrastructure unless they make their own major additions.  Any offering can be differentiated by service, and the degree and quality of service is critical to customer satisfaction and plays a strong role in value creation.

The OpenStack announcement as it regards Object Store and its approach to cloud storage seems to view cloud storage infrastructure as highly akin to an operating system (or at least a "hypervisor") and more similar to a selection of LINUX or Windows than that of an application or middleware layer.  While I agree that cloud compute is very close to this model, cloud storage is a service oriented architecture, with programmability for new applications that can tolerate Internet latency because of Web Services (like ReST APIs). The industry constantly overlooks this key point as it is consumed with the low cost, pay for use and thin provisioning capabilities of this storage tier.  Solutions for thin provisioning and low cost have been available far longer than cloud storage. Further, pay for use is more of a business decision than a technology. 

In the earliest days of cloud storage, there existed initial confusion that cloud storage was defined by cost, scalability, pay for use, and thin provisioning only and not programmable access (usually via ReST APIs).  ParaScale paid a huge price for not understanding that cloud storage requires Web services (like ReST API) access.  Now, with OpenStack Object Store, we see a follow on case of this same perspective, but with basic APIs for Put, Get and List.   Yes, it provides for Internet access via ReST APIs, but the focus continues to be primarily cost based versus new application enablement based.  It could be argued that the open source approach will provide for the appropriate additions of "advanced services" to be added.  However, even the use of the platform by NASA is more focused on cost of storage than on advanced functionality because NASA stores much more data than almost any institution or enterprise in the world.

I think Savio Rodrigues states this view very well in his post:

"Select products based on business needs, not license alone: It's also interesting to note that very few enterprises are in NASA's position with regards to size of IT investment and skills in-house. While NASA engineers were ready and willing to contribute new features into the Eucalyptus open source community, few companies have the skills or governance to consider allowing their developers to contribute to open source projects.  Summary trend number 7 from the 2010 Eclipse survey results highlighted this issue.

To suggest that NASA's buying or IT decision making patterns represents much more than the top 1 percent of IT buyers would be a stretch."

The overwhelming majority of enterprises would rather pay a vendor to deliver, maintain, support and enhance their private cloud software infrastructure than place that burden on internal IT staff. Whether the enterprise is paying for a closed source commercial product, a commercial product based on an open core product, or a subscription to an open source product, the product selection decision will be made based on business requirements much broader than 'is the product open source or not?' "

Keep in mind that cloud storage is a stand alone service associated with application delivery over the Internet and also associated with low cost, pay for use, scalable storage resources.  Social media applications and many Web based applications exploit these capabilities; for example publishing a file to a URL and significant tagging of files.

This view of cloud storage as nothing more than cost and volume-based ignores its extraordinary importance as a service-oriented architecture for new application enablement.  I believe both views are equally important and need to be equally served.  Will OpenStack, with its pervasive cost focus, be able to drive its community to this additional view of needed contributions of advanced services for cloud storage?  Lydia Leong of Gartner Group provides an interesting view of the open source community issues associated with this in her post:

"At the same time, open sourcing is not necessarily a way to software success. Rackspace has a whole host of new challenges that it will have to meet. First, it must ensure that the roadmap of the new project aligns sufficiently with its own needs, since it has decided that it will use the project's public codebase for its own service. Second, it now has to manage and just as importantly, lead, an open-source community, getting useful commits from outside contributors and managing the commit process. (Rackspace and NASA have formed a board for governance of the project, on which they have multiple seats but are in the minority.) Third, as with all such things, there are potential code-quality issues, the impact of which become significantly magnified when running operations at massive scale."

One last comment on this business of vendor lock in and cloud storage APIs (another focus of the OpenStack announcement).  I would submit that while a specific set of APIs has the potential to create vendor lock in, this is a much smaller problem than what is experienced in other technologies.  If you are really worried about it, you probably have never actually written a ReST API call.  It is written in many languages, and we have seen cases where applications that run on S3 run unchanged on Mezeo.  Others need very minor modifications, and still others are excited to take advantage of some of the unique Mezeo services.  It just is not a problem, and this is much more related to FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and marketing zealotry than it is associated with technological reality.  The APIs of choice will shake out, and it is far too early to say if it will be S3, OpenStack, CDMI or a combination of all of these, and others, as yet unforeseen. 

At Mezeo, we have never believed there will be one winner, and instead focused on architecture to enable easy and effective delivery of whichever APIs stand the test of time. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API enables advanced services and programmatic access to Mezeo enabled storage clouds.   The Mezeo Interoperability API enables seamless interoperability of applications developed for Amazon S3, Google and Eucalyptus based storage clouds.

The interesting view that seems to be missing here is that marketplace competition by service providers already serves to drive down the price of cloud storage, so a commoditized stack embraced by most is unlikely to yield extraordinary incremental savings.  At the same time, while the competitive market conspires to drive cloud storage costs ever lower, the need to differentiate, and deliver solutions as well as a programmable storage to enable multiple new and exciting types of applications will rapidly replace the pure cost and scale focus of current cloud storage offerings.  Sometimes, the "new" application is simply enabling it in the cloud, to produce the same result at a lower cost!  This requires significant cloud storage functionality in order to make this easy and productive.  Amazon continues to prove this with their many additions and capabilities which differentiate their service.  Mezeo sees much the same view on the part of our customers.  The focus is on what cloud storage can do, what problems will it solve, what business opportunities does it create, what new applications can it enable and all of these views assume it will be competitively priced.

Cloud storage represents significant opportunities for institutions, the enterprise (see my recent post on the business case for enterprise cloud storage) and for the IT service provider.  Cloud storage is substantially different from cloud compute, and requires that you understand this difference in order to effectively evaluate the impact of this announcement, as well as your next steps.

There is no doubt that every enterprise has devoted some time and energy to evaluating how cloud technologies can best be put to work in their ongoing pursuit of cost reduction and to a lesser extent for potential improved service levels particularly around rapid provisioning of compute and storage resources.  Mezeo has recently begun to work with various enterprises, and I want to share some of the opportunities that appear to align strongly with these two goals.

In terms of cost, most enterprises are experiencing continued and significant growth in unstructured data.  As they look at the cost of this growth, it is more than just physical storage, data center occupancy, bandwidth utilization and power and the accompanying management demands; it is also the backup and disaster recovery requirements and the ability to quickly satisfy users who need more storage in order to execute whatever tasks and jobs they have.  Against this backdrop, the drumbeat of Amazon S3 and other public storage clouds advertises storage at costs that are generally below the internal "advertised" cost of the typical Fortune 500 company.  What gives?

First, cents/GB/month is only the tip of the iceberg, and bandwidth along with access charges gives a more realistic cost appraisal.  Next, real and legitimate concerns about data security exist (will someone gain unauthorized access, by accident or via an attack, to company data stored in a multi-tenant public storage cloud?).  Also, data integrity concerns are well founded (will the bits I store be returned, and will they be backed up and appropriate DR measures taken?).  Finally, can I absolutely trust the service provider to execute to the extent deemed necessary, and if they do, can they really save me any real money versus the assumed risk profile?  Private cloud computing is an appropriate strategy for addressing these issues.  

Not all unstructured data is a candidate for the latency of cloud storage as delivered from an IT service provider via the Internet.  So, while some tiers of data may be appropriate for a cloud storage service, it is a subset of the enterprise unstructured data requirement and not a lower cost panacea.  Hopefully, CIOs can easily make this case with their peers in senior management, although it may sometimes seem like they are making an excuse for keeping control and not exploiting new technologies.

Question one surrounds the cost proposition, and our analysis suggests that, even at sub petabyte initial cloud sizes, the enterprise can deliver economics for in-house cloud storage that compare very favorably.  In fact, it may even be lower than what is available from a service provider.  The Mezeo team comes from both a hosting and a cloud storage background, and this just reinforces our view that the cost proposition for private cloud storage has favorable economics.  However, if you are being forced to allocate capital for data center build outs, or you are otherwise CAPEX constrained, the hosted public cloud economics can be quite appealing.  Since businesses require positive margins, this further drives up the cost of cloud storage as hosted at a public service provider.

The case for improved user satisfaction is similar, regardless of public versus private, because the cloud gives users the capabilities they want.  First, with rapid provisioning of pay-as-you-go low cost cloud storage, the end user gets what they need when they need it via a frictionless interface.   Second, several benefits drive end user demand for cloud storage; including: avoidance of workstation storage upgrades, one solution for file sharing and collaboration, new capabilities and applications that exploit file search, tagging and publishing to a public URL, and the ability to access your storage anytime, anywhere and on any device.  Third, the solution is also ideal for implementing a workstation backup solution with sync.  It is not hard to see why end users would find all of these capabilities appealing.

Cloud storage clients, gateways and edge devices are also beginning to appear, and can solve many different issues.  For example, a client gives the end user access to multiple cloud storage accounts at multiple providers.  Why not replace that tape backup operation at a remote location with an iSCSI interface directly to a storage cloud, for a scheduled backup without local user intervention (get rid of the tape backup of your local file server, forever)?  Speaking of file servers, multiple solutions for replacing or even displacing file servers are coming to the market.  The savings from removing an entire layer of infrastructure are quite compelling.

New applications, including use of social media, may require file publishing.  Cloud storage allows you to store training videos, and make them easily available at every end user in the company.  Tagging and search offers new application capabilities, and new opportunities to support existing compliance requirements.  Secure file sharing, versus file publishing, may be a significant requirement as you work with customers and business partners.  Partner, customer and employee portals can reach new levels of capability with API accessible cloud storage, as the availability and the management of information is delivered via the cloud.

Our observation is that the early adopters have begun the move to cloud storage.  Why?  Simply, enterprise private cloud storage allows you to gain many of the benefits and set aside the security and data integrity concerns of public cloud storage.  At the same time, data tiering and private and public could solutions will drive "hybrid" cloud approaches that will allow the enterprise to exploit the best of both worlds.  In an upcoming post, we will offer up some tools to examine the cost and the benefits of cloud storage for the enterprise. 

Cloud Storage Strategy interviewed Gladinet co-founder Jerry Huang on cloud desktops, cloud gateways, and his company's business model. 

[NOTE: Gladinet is a customer of Mezeo Software.]

The definition of cloud storage has been on my mind lately, and I think some attention to this topic is still called for.  From an article in CXO Today:  Cloud storage is not a disk array that you own, lease, or manage neither is it a virtual logical unit number (LUN) from a larger disk array. It is in fact it is offered via an application programming interface (API) through which you can send and receive data without having to actively manage the storage.

I see many "Cloud Storage" services and vendors of cloud storage infrastructure products that do not do or provide for what is described in the preceding observation.  For example, some cloud storage services are really offerings of storage that are associated with cloud computing.  One major requirement is storing and retrieving cloud computing images.  Since these are "bootable" the typical storage approach is an iSCSI connected storage resource.  A cloud computing image may require files for its application, and these are often stored on shared storage systems, and may be accessed in a variety of ways, but not necessarily via Web services APIs. 

Often, IT service providers call this shared storage; however, when it is accessed by cloud computing images, it is often referred to as cloud storage.  Finally, block data, like  a data base, is often required for the application running on a cloud computing image, and is accessed via iSCSI, and may be referred to as cloud storage. 

So, where do these observations lead us?

There are many benefits of a storage cloud, and for the user these include ease of access (in a variety of ways) to various amounts of storage on an as needed basis, with instant or nearly instant provisioning, with little if any traditional storage management requirements for the user.  IT service providers, and enterprise IT organizations are fundamentally organized around the premise of service delivery.  So, for both of these entities, a service offering like cloud storage is an important business asset, and the primary differences in the deployed infrastructure is associated with multi-tenancy (which, among other things, drives different security requirements) and billing. 

For many months, I have relied on the following definition of cloud storage: a persistent storage solution for objects (also called files or unstructured data) accessed via Web services APIs via a network (LAN or WAN). 

Today, I would like to move forward and offer a new definition, more encompassing, and reflecting not just a purist view but attempting to capture what is truly important for an IT service provider, in house or as a focus of a business (hosters, telcos, and cloud providers): 

"Cloud Storage provides whatever amount of storage you require, on an immediate basis.  It is persistent.  It can be accessed in a variety of ways, both in the data center where the cloud is housed, as well as via the Internet.  If you obtain this from an external provider, it is purchased on a pay as you go basis.  You do not manage it, you use it, and the service provider manages it." 

Here is how we depict this at Mezeo:

 

I strongly believe that obtaining, using, and decommissioning persistent storage in a simple, easy way, available in any quantity on a pay-for-use basis, and accessible in a variety of ways, via the Internet or at the data center where your application runs, is the heart of the matter.  If you get that service in house, or from an IT service provider, it should include the aforementioned characteristics.  This is a very inclusive definition, and it provides for traditional access methods, as well as programmable access (Web services APIs). 

Finally, here are three more points that are very important:

1) By Web Services API access, we mean API access to stored content!  This is different from APIs for storage management and is specific to a way of working with stored content.

 2)  New applications, and retrofits, will ultimately expect "programmable" storage.  This is a classic "Innovators Dilemma" scenario, I see it every day, and it is coming. 

3)  HTTP access (Web services API or "programmable") is not slower than other access, but it does tolerate the latency of the Internet.  As a result, you will ultimately see that HTTP access of storage in a data center will be a preferred approach, because of it's "programmability" and the desired performance.  This will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

A hat-tip to Stephen Foskett is in order as well.  Take a look at this entertaining article in which he struggles to find an appropriate name for "cloud storage."

According to a recent Gartner press release, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets by 2012:

Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.

The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee’s desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.

This is a bold statement. If we believe Gartner, it means that we are at the beginning of an explosion in cloud-based services managed by trusted providers on behalf of the enterprise. Of course not all businesses will choose this path, but a substantial number of industries can and will. As I blogged about earlier, the message from the CFO office is clear. We will see adoption rates rise dramatically as the benefits of cloud services become more obvious to business leaders.

A second point of interest is the prediction that by 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20 percent of the leading cloud aggregators in the market (through cloud service offerings).

Here’s the take-away:

Gartner is seeing India-centric IT services companies leveraging established market positions and levels of trust to explore nonlinear revenue growth models (which are not directly correlated to labor-based growth) and working on interesting research and development (R&D) efforts, especially in the area of cloud computing. The collective work from India-centric vendors represents an important segment of the market’s cloud aggregators, which will offer cloud-enabled outsourcing options (also known as cloud services).

We are witnessing examples of what GE innovation consultant Vijay Govindarajan calls reverse innovation in IT. Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the CEO of Tata Consultancy Services notes:

I’ve seen the new cloud-based computing models for applications and processes gaining currency in emerging markets. Rural cooperative banks and small and medium businesses in India are actually far ahead of their western counterparts in adopting these models. In fact, companies from emerging markets, buoyed by strong domestic revenues and revival in growth, have been making adjustments to their global strategies and fine-tuning their investments in order to be part of the recovery process in the west and build on their global expansion plans.

As the enterprise embraces the cloud, they’ll need a maturity model to help them on their journey. My next post will explore what the maturity model for cloud storage looks like.