The cloud is fundamentally transforming information technology.  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are helping companies accelerate the pace of innovation, avoid capital equipment expenses and free up staff to focus on strategic activities to grow the business.

Traditional IT platforms can’t meet the increased agility and price-performance demands of today’s fast-paced digital world. In a 2018 IDG survey of 200 IT executives, legacy IT infrastructure is cited as a top barrier to IT transformation.

Businesses in every industry are looking to cloud-based services to augment or replace traditional on-premises IT systems, and facilitate digital transformation.  Most are pursuing hybrid cloud approaches. (63% of enterprises in the IDG survey are pursuing a hybrid cloud approach.)

First-generation cloud storage providers offer confusing tiered storage services.  Each storage tier is intended for a specific type of data and has distinct performance characteristics, SLAs, and pricing plans (with complex fee structures).

While each vendor’s portfolio is slightly different, these tiered services are generally optimized for three distinct classes of data.

Active Data
Live data that is readily accessible by the operating system, an application, or users. Active data is frequently accessed and has stringent read/write performance requirements.

Active Archive
Occasionally accessed data that is available instantly online(not restored and rehydrated from an offline or remote source). Examples include backup data for rapid disaster recovery or large video files that might be accessed from time to time on short notice.

Inactive Archive
Infrequently accessed data. Examples include data maintained long-term for regulatory compliance.  Historically, inactive data is archived to tape and stored offsite.

Identifying the best storage class (and best value) for a particular application can be a real challenge with a legacy cloud storage provider.  Microsoft Azure, for example, offers four distinct object storage options: General Purpose v1, General Purpose v2, Blob Storage, and Premium Blob Storage.  Each option has unique pricing and performance characteristics. And some (but not all) of the options support three distinct storage tiers, with distinct SLAs and fees: hot storage (for frequently accessed data), cool storage (for infrequently accessed data), and archive storage (for rarely accessed data). With so many choices and pricing variables, it is nearly impossible to make a well-informed decision and to accurately budget expenses.

At Wasabi, we believe cloud storage should be simple. Unlike legacy cloud storage services with confusing storage tiers and convoluted pricing schemes, we provide a single product—with predictable, affordable, and straightforward pricing—that satisfies any cloud storage requirement. You can use Wasabi for any data storage class:  active data, active archive, and inactive archive.

Even though hybrid IT environments are common, the terminology used to describe them can be inconsistent and contradictory.  The term cloud computing was coined in 1996, yet to this day there is no universally recognized body for defining industry-standard terms and constructs. Not surprisingly, vendors often intentionally conflate terms to hype their solutions and seed confusion.  In the storage arena, in particular, terms like multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, and hybrid storage are often used interchangeably.

Before we dig into hybrid storage use cases let’s review the most widely accepted definitions of some commonly used cloud computing terms to level-set the discussion.

Cloud Computing Models

Public Cloud

A shared, remotely hosted and managed, multi-tenant IT environment.  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are the most popular first-generation public clouds.  Wasabi is also a public cloud, specifically, a next-generation IaaS storage solution.

Private Cloud

A cloud implementation dedicated to a single tenant, typically done by using virtualization technology.  Some businesses implement and manage their own clouds in a corporate data center or co-location center. Private clouds are typically operated by corporate IT and used by line-of-business customers to build and run applications. Managed service providers, colocation providers, and some public cloud providers also offer private cloud services, i.e. a remotely hosted and managed cloud instance, running on hardware dedicated to a single customer.

Hybrid Cloud

A mixed implementation composed of public and private cloud resources.  For example, a business might use a private cloud for workloads with extreme security or performance requirements, and a public cloud for workloads with less stringent requirements.

Multi-Cloud

This term is most often used to describe a mixed implementation composed of multiple clouds, such as one public cloud provider for computing, another for a content delivery network, and Wasabi for active data storage.

You can use cloud storage to protect data stored on conventional on-premises storage platforms (NAS/SAN/DAS).  Many companies are struggling to protect business-critical data against equipment failures, disasters, and ransomware.  Replicating data to a secondary data center is an expensive undertaking, beyond the reach of most organizations. (Most businesses can’t afford to build out and operate a secondary data center for DR/BC).  And backing up to tape is a manually intensive and inefficient process that often leaves valuable business data unprotected. Many businesses ship tapes offsite for disaster recovery. It can take days to retrieve tapes, rebuild systems and restore business-critical applications and data in the wake of a catastrophe.

Backing up data to the cloud is far more cost-effective than backing up data to a secondary data center.  It is also much faster and more efficient than using tape and offsite vaulting for backup and recovery. Cloud storage can help you save money and improve recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs).

Cloud Backup for Traditional On-Premises Storage (NAS/SAN/DAS)

You can also use cloud storage to cost-effectively protect desktops and laptops scattered throughout the enterprise.  A centralized, cloud-based endpoint backup solution can help simplify operations, reduce help desk burdens and ensure employee data is always protected.

Cloud Backup for Windows and MacOS Endpoints

You can combine cloud storage and on-premises storage infrastructure to create virtual, instantly scalable resource pools for greater flexibility and economics.  You can use third-party virtual storage infrastructure solutions to build elastic storage fabrics that extend from the corporate data center to the cloud—with unified programming and administrative interfaces.

These software-defined solutions provide abstract APIs that decouple applications from the underlying storage technology. Using administratively defined policies, applications can automatically write data to a particular on-prem or cloud platform based on security requirements, cost constraints, or performance needs.

Elastic storage fabrics bring cloud agility, scalability, and cost savings to the corporate data center.

Elastic Storage Fabric with On-Prem and Cloud Resources

You can introduce cloud storage in an incremental fashion to support new applications as part of a “cap-and-grow” strategy.  You can use on-premises storage equipment for legacy applications and add cloud storage services as you roll out new applications.  With a cap-and-grow approach, you can avoid disruptive rip-and-replace upgrades, transition legacy applications over time, and gradually phase out legacy storage platforms on your own terms.

Quite simply, Wasabi hot cloud storage is the industry’s most economical and highest-performing cloud storage service. Specifically conceived to make cloud storage a utility like electricity, Wasabi is inexpensive, simple, and dependable.

Advantages of using Wasabi for hybrid storage include:

Commodity pricing

Wasabi hot cloud storage costs a flat $.0059/GB/month.   Compare that to $.023/GB/month for Amazon S3 Standard, $.026/GB/month for Google Multi-Regional, and $.046/GB/month for Azure RA-GRS Hot.

Unlike AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure we don’t impose extra fees to retrieve data from storage (egress fees).  And we don’t charge extra fees for PUT, GET, DELETE, or other API calls.

Superior performance

Wasabi’s parallelized system architecture delivers a faster performance advantage over first-generation cloud-storage services, with significantly faster time-to-first-byte speeds.

• Download our Performance Benchmark report for additional information

Robust data durability and protection

Wasabi hot cloud storage is engineered to deliver extreme data durability, integrity, and security. An optional data immutability capability prevents accidental deletions and administrative mishaps; protects against malware, bugs, and viruses; and improves regulatory compliance.

• Read our Strong Security tech brief
• Read our Data Immutability tech brief

Wasabi hot cloud storage is bit-compatible with Amazon’s S3 API, which has emerged as a de facto object storage API. You can use S3-compliant data management solutions to support a variety of hybrid storage and multi-cloud applications.

Wasabi’s Performance and Certification Team (PACT) has validated interoperability with a number of third-party data management products. View our technology partners for a complete list of PACT-certified vendors and applications.