Why Not Go Virtual?
From a technology perspective, 95% of respondents use hard-disk-based systems for their on-premises storage. More than half use magnetic tape, with optical disks (28%) and solid-state drives (25%) filling in at the high end to create a tiered environment that can be tailored to the access demands on various classes of data. Given widespread server virtualization, we expected to see movement toward on-premises virtualized storage systems. After all, vendors such as DataCore, FalconStor, and StarWind offer flexible, standards-based storage software that will run on any x86 platform and easily add a software virtualization layer.
Nope. Over the next two years, 60% of respondents expect virtualized storage to make up less than 25% of their environments. Of that, nearly 20% said they won't use virtualized storage at all. Unlike server virtualization, few in our survey see the value of storage virtualization and remain content with the status quo of on-premises, Tier 1 SANs.
Why the lack of interest? A key benefit of outsourcing storage is shifting the burden of capacity and performance management, not to mention operations and maintenance, to the provider. Not so with internally virtualized environments, where CIOs may not think the benefits outweigh the cost and effort to deploy and manage. This attitude reflects what we're seeing in our practice: Only extremely large enterprises can justify the manpower that virtualized storage requires.
32 Flavors
The term "cloud storage" is imprecise, so in our survey we drilled down into various aspects, like backup and email archiving, and extending on-premises raw storage. Public off-site services can provide file-system access for enterprise applications, creating a hybrid on- and off-premises storage environment.Vendors such as GoGrid, Peer1, and Rackspace also offer managed on-site services that make it easier for IT shops to virtualize storage within their data centers and provide for scalability and management in a much denser environment. Hybrid approaches combine public and private, allowing for bursting into the provider's data center when on-premises capacity is exceeded. Running applications in a mixed environment can improve performance across a highly distributed geographical area.
Even with all these options, our survey found very low adoption rates. A mere 15% said they're using public storage services. Only 10% said they're planning to adopt them within the next two years. While 38% of respondents are still considering how to proceed, 37% have decided they have no desire to look outside for storage. While marketing of public clouds is hot, potential buyers are cautious. So what's the holdup?
As in other cloud surveys, security, privacy, reliability, performance, potential for data loss, and availability lead the list of inhibitors among those with no plans to use public cloud storage. Regulatory and legal constraints are also of great concern to 39% of respondents. Those are some pretty big barriers to overcome.
The willingness to store data off site also varies greatly by industry--healthcare, financial, and legal firms may never move to off-site storage, except for peripheral services. "There's too much risk relying on the Internet and other networks/data centers to store medical imaging and reporting there," says Eric Nied, CIO with Radiology Ltd.
"Our information is sensitive and highly regulated," says Billy McDonald, VP of IT with E Federal Credit Union. "I can keep it locally, have more control, more security, for less cost, and simply feel better about it."
Among those companies open to public storage services, they're most likely to consider these services for backup, disaster recovery, and file and e-mail archiving. When it comes to primary data storage, the numbers fall off dramatically. Scroggins says he sees small and midsize businesses as the sweet spot for storage service providers, whose data protection practices may be an improvement over what an SMB could afford on its own. But as we hear about successful breaches of corporations from Citi and Nasdaq to PBS and Sony, we can't help but think large enterprises should compare their security with what a storage provider like EMC or HP could provide.
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