New Survey Affirms Cloud Storage is the Wave of the Future

A new Enterprise Storage Forum survey confirms what we at Wasabi have known for a long time: traditional on-site storage solutions are too expensive to operate and scale.  The popular tech site recently surveyed hundreds of IT professionals working for small, mid-sized and large companies across a range of verticals to get a pulse on storage technology trends and buying plans. 

The Data Storage Trends 2018 survey identifies aging storage gear as the number one storage challenge facing today’s IT organizations.  Not surprisingly, many businesses are turning to the cloud to eliminate equipment cost and complexity.  About one-third of survey respondents already use cloud storage as their primary storage technology. And half are seriously considering purchasing cloud storage in the next two years. (Flash/SSD products came in a distant second.  Only about 30% of respondents are seriously considering solid-state drives.)

In this blog, I’ll take a look at the top four challenges raised in the survey and explain how Wasabi hot cloud storage can help you overcome them.

What is the biggest challenge involved with operating your current storage infrastructure?

Challenge #1 – Aging Gear

Storage technology is advancing at a breakneck pace.  Storage density and price-performance numbers improve dramatically every year.  As a result, on-premises storage gear can quickly become obsolete—often before it is fully depreciated.  Many businesses hold on to underperforming storage platforms for years, hoping to make the most of their capital investments.  But outdated storage solutions can impair application performance and hinder business agility.

With cloud storage, you don’t have to worry about recouping capital outlays or keeping pace with innovation.  The cloud provider is responsible for maintaining and upgrading the storage infrastructure.  At Wasabi we’re continuously improving our platform and enhancing our intellectual property, so you’ll always have access to cutting-edge technology.  And with our cloud-based service, painful end-of-life programs and disruptive rip-and-replace upgrades are a thing of the past.  We deliver new features and functionality in the cloud, transparently and seamlessly.

Challenge #2 – Lack of Storage Capacity

Data growth is spiraling out of control—doubling every year in many companies.  Many businesses are struggling to keep pace with growth. Legacy on-prem storage solutions are notoriously expensive to scale.  Many companies have to make difficult decisions about which types of data to collect, where to store it and for how long.  Some organizations distribute data across different storage technologies (SAN, NAS, tape) to optimize capacity, balance performance and contain costs—a resource-intensive and time-consuming process, that requires careful planning and specialized data management tools.

Cloud storage has the potential to radically simplify capacity planning and dramatically improve economics. After all, cloud-based services are instantly and infinitely scalable.  Unfortunately, legacy cloud vendors like Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform all offer tiered storage plans that are confusing and expensive.  Each tier has distinct performance characteristics and pricing schedules. Selecting the right plan and forecasting costs is a challenge.  When you factor in all the extra egress fees and API charges, the long-term TCO can actually exceed that of an on-premises solution.

Wasabi’s mission is to make cloud storage a simple and affordable utility like electricity.  Wasabi hot cloud storage is easy to understand and cost-effective to scale, with no confusing storage tiers and no complicated fee structures.  One product, with predictable and economical pricing, satisfies just about any cloud storage application.

Challenge #3 – High Costs of Operation

On-premises storage platforms are inherently expensive to operate. Most enterprise-class storage systems are difficult to administer, and require special training and expertise.   Excessive administrative costs, over-priced hardware and software maintenance contracts, and recurring power, cooling and rack space expenses all add up to high ongoing operations costs.

With Wasabi, you can eliminate equipment operations expenses, simplify system administration and free up valuable IT staff to focus on core business tasks.  Forget about pricey maintenance agreements, expensive hardware upgrades, and annoying power and HVAC costs. We manage the storage infrastructure, amortize our operations expenses across our entire customer base, and pass the savings along to you in the form of ultra-low-cost, usage-based pricing.

Challenge #4 – Security and Compliance

Securing data and ensuring compliance with constantly evolving government regulations is a significant challenge for many IT organizations and InfoSec teams.  By law, many businesses and institutions must protect confidential customer data against unauthorized access and disclosure.  And some organizations must preserve certain types of records for years or even for posterity.

Wasabi hot cloud storage provides extreme data durability, integrity and security. The service is built and managed according to security best practices and standards, and is designed to comply with a range of data privacy and retention regulations including HIPAA, HITECH, SEC, FINRA, GDPR, CJIS and FERPA. Wasabi encrypts data at rest and data in transit to ensure privacy.  And we support an optional data immutability capability that protects data against administrative mishaps, viruses and ransomware.

Say Goodbye to Aging Storage Gear.  Say Hello to Wasabi.

Are outdated on-site storage solutions holding back your business? Make the move to Wasabi and say goodbye to equipment cost and complexity.  To learn more about our price, performance and protection advantages, download our Wasabi Eliminates On-Premises Storage Cost and Management Barriers white paper.