Storage

Should you utilize Cloud Storage in your strategy?

So Cloud Technologies are all the buzz! And rightly so as depending on your application infrastructure via the cloud can be a viable tool for you to utilize. On this page we are going to limit ourselved and discuss utilizing Storage on the Cloud as part of your Infrastructure strategy.

Some of the potential benefits to adopting a cloud storage tier include the following:
- Reduced upfront and ongoing storage costs and capactiy.
- Near-perfect economics, as you only pay for the capacity that you use.
- Subscription based services that roll up as an operating expense (no capitalization needed)
- Reduced operating expenses as the service provider is responsible for managing the infrastructure and scaling out appropriately.
- Allows for greater flexibility and responsiveness to your business partners. Easy deployment of temporary capacity allows you to be more nimble.

What are the concerns? Well to be honest - information security and a clear definition of as to what constitutes cloud storage. IT managers are paranoid about what could happen to corporate information once outside the physical boundaries of their domain. However, if you dig a little deeper you will find that cloud storage has been adopted in some sectors as a data archive tier and delivering cost-savings benefits for quite some time.

Cloud storage makes sense for data that needs to be retained for long periods of time, is shared by multiple users, needs to be easily accessed and requires latency tolerance, which perfectly describes items such as document storage, digital medical images and healthcare records. The massive growth of unstructured data isn't just a healthcare problem. Unstructured data will make up a vast majority of data in commercial data centers by 2012. Moving your long-tail data (you need to keep it but no one is changing it and even rarely accessing it) to the cloud as a public archiving option is an option but be careful when selecting a cloud storage vendor. Do your homework.

We at Zombie Data utilize a commodity based solution platform that provides massive scalability, and economies of scale. At the same time we strive to maintain ease of use and management. Talk to us about your data storage issues and let's work together to find the right solution for you!