Research Cloud Storage 6340672

June 2011 $99 Analytics.InformationWeek.
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Cloud Storage:
Changing D ynamics B eyond S er vices

Surrounded by data? Demands from users for fast access? Endless retention policies? Cloud storage can help, say vendors. However, our survey reveals that IT is skeptical. While off-site services may indeed have the potential to transform the storage landscape, most respondents are rightly leery of moving precious data to a public cloud.
By Michael Biddick
Report ID: R2750611
New Storage Dynamics

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Authors Bio Executive Summary Research Synopsis Limitless Data Impact Assessment Lay Down the Law The Economics of Storage Why Not Go Virtual? 32 Flavors Bells and Whistles Vendor Choices Your Strategy Related Reports
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2011 InformationWeek, Reproduction Prohibited

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Figure 1: Approach to Public Cloud Storage Services Figure 2: Degree of Concern With On-Premises Storage Costs Figure 3: On-Premises Storage Costs Figure 4: Data Retention Periods Figure 5: Data Retention Policy Compliance Figure 6: Drivers of Storage Growth Figure 7: Tools Used to Manage Storage Systems Figure 8: Current Distribution of Storage Capacity Figure 9: Distribution of Storage Capacity in Two Years Figure 10: Functions Moved to Public Cloud Storage Figure 11: Reasons for Not Adopting Public Cloud Storage Services Figure 12: Importance of Cloud Storage Features Figure 13: Types of On-Premises Storage Used Figure 14: Public Cloud Storage Concerns Figure 15: Storage Resource Management Vendors Used Figure 16: Cloud Storage Vendors Figure 17: Company Revenue Figure 18: Company Size Figure 19: Industry Figure 20: Job Title
10 11 12 13 15 17 18 19 20 22 23 26 28 30 32 33 34 35

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Michael Biddick is president and CTO of Fusion PPT and an InformationWeek Analytics contributor. He has worked with hundreds of government and telecommunications service providers in Michael Biddick Fusion PPT the development of operational management solutions. Most recently he has supported the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Defense in the deployment of ITIL-based processes that are utilized to make their organizations more transparent and cost effective. Certified in several ITIL life cycle service areas, Michael is also able to leverage more than a decade of operational tool design and implementation experience with service desks, network management systems and consolidated management portals in making enterprise architecture decisions. Before joining Fusion PPT, Michael spent 10 years with Windward IT Solutions and also worked with Booz Allen Hamilton in its enterprise network services group, developing network management solutions for a wide variety of government and commercial clients. He also served on the academic staff of the University of Wisconsin Law School as the director of technology, heading up all aspects of IT management for the organization. Michael earned a master of science from Johns Hopkins University and a dual bachelors degree in political science and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a contributing technology editor to InformationWeek and Network Computing, he has authored more than 50 articles, including reports on cloud computing, government IT strategies, SaaS and IT process improvement.
4 June 2011

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Executive Summary
5 June 2011
Our recent InformationWeek Analytics State of Cloud Computing Survey showed overall acceptance of these services; just 33% of 607 respondents said they wouldnt use off-premises providers, down from 48% in our 2010 poll. However, that doesnt tell the whole story. When we broke down those currently using cloud services, 53% said theyve adopted SaaS vs. 28% using infrastructure-as-a-service offerings. That got us wondering: What piece of the IT infrastructure would be the first to make the leap? Storage seemed like a good bet; however, our 2011 State of Enterprise Storage Survey showed a lot of caution around public storage services. Of course, the terms cloud and storage both cover a lot of ground. Long-term email archiving is a different beast from disaster recovery, which is different from application backup. And EMC is different from Joes Cut-Rate Cloud. Still, skepticism rules, so we decided to dig deeper into our readers plans for a range of innovative technologies that could help flatten the steep curve of data growth and ease the pressure storage puts on the IT budget. In this InformationWeek Analytics report, well discuss the results of that survey, evaluate where the cloud offers a viable alternative to on-premises storageand where it doesntand explore our general lack of adoption of technologies that could tame the storage beast.

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Research Synopsis
6 June 2011
Survey Name: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey Survey Date: April 2011 Region: North America Number of Respondents: 363 Purpose: To determine interest in the use of public cloud storage in the enterprise. Methodology: InformationWeek Analytics surveyed business technology decision-makers at North American companies. The survey was conducted online, and respondents were recruited via an email invitation containing an embedded link to the survey. The email invitation was sent to qualified InformationWeek subscribers.
ABOUT US | InformationWeek Analytics experienced analysts arm business technology

decision-makers with real-world perspective based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, business and technology assessment and planning tools, and technology adoption best practices gleaned from experience. If youd like to contact us, write to managing director Art Wittmann at awittmann@techweb.com, content director Lorna Garey at lgarey@techweb.com and research managing editor Heather Vallis at hvallis@techweb.com. Find all of our reports at www.analytics.informationweek.com.

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Limitless Data
Its not news that storage is weighing down IT budgets. Our InformationWeek Analytics 2011 State of Storage Survey showed the amount of actively managed storage expanding at around 20% per year; we work with a few organizations dealing with growth rates exceeding 50%. At these levels, most data centers will double storage capacity requirements every two to three years. And as employees start using multiple mobile devices and consumer applications for work, that estimate could be conservative. In our first InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey, 59% of respondents call out email as the application most responsible for storage growth, followed by increasing demand from new/planned applications (58%). Slightly fewer, 53%, cite their retention policies as the driving reason they need to save more data. Seventy-six percent say theyre somewhat or very concerned about storage costs, and most CIOs we speak with insist theyre actively seeking ways to reduce expenditures while still keeping data available.
Figure 1
Approach to Public Cloud Storage Services

What is your organizations approach to using public cloud storage services?
15%
We have no plans to use public cloud storage services
37%
We are currently using public cloud storage services We plan to adopt public cloud storage services within the next 12 months 7% We plan to adopt public cloud storage services within 3% the next 13 to 24 months
38%
We are currently assessing how to proceed
Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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So you can imagine our surprise that, when asked what theyre spending per gigabyte, nearly half of our respondents admit they have no clue. Data retention policies are in place, but enforcement is all over the map. When we asked about strategies that could help lower costs, we saw a distinct lack of interest. Just 25% plan to adopt any public cloud storage within the next two years vs. 37% with no plans. Very few are taking advantage of storage virtualization. Sixty-one percent either make do with the management tools provided by their storage vendors (53%) or dont actively manage storage resources (8%). Lets be clear: No vendor is going to show up with a magic multifunction storage ber solution that will save us from ourselves, and you cant depend on commoditization, either. At large enterprise clients, were seeing the crushing weight of storage volume growth outstrip the drop-
Impact Assessment: Storage Virtualization

Impact to IT Organization Benefit Storage virtualization puts an end to the practice of designing storage arrays around fixed volume arrangementsand to the stranglehold of Tier 1 gear vendors. It can simplify disaster recovery and business continuity and easily add deduplication. The ability to abstract storage from underlying hardware means storage virtualization, like its server kin, can have sizeable benefits to the bottom line, with ROIs measured in months, not years. It helps with VDI as well as backup and disaster recovery. Storage virtualization technologies have evolved dramatically since the first arrays hit the market, but even greater changes are yet to come, so waiting isnt likely to hurt competitiveness. In fact, waiting might be an advantage. Risk Size matters. We dont expect storage virtualization will ever achieve the adoption levels of server virtualization because its just not applicable to smaller companies, even those with the expertise to tackle the increased complexity. Tier 1 storage gear may be expensive, but youre getting support services and valueadded features.The question to ask is, are these niceties worth the markup, or could those funds be put to better use elsewhere? Storage virtualization may lessen the granularity of control IT has when it comes to where data resides, which can present performance risks and, possibly, security and regulatory worries.
Business Organization
Business Competitiveness
Bottom Line: For enterprises with deep storage expertise, block-level storage virtualization is a logical step in the progression toward a fully virtualized data center and a way to shed proprietary platforms, with all of the associated heavy lifting and data migration headaches each time a SAN must be upgraded or replaced. Use of storage hypervisors opens the door to an appealing set of options and is worth looking at if you plan on file or desktop virtualization or if you want to standardize management of a variety of existing storage systems.
8 June 2011

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ping cost of physical medialeading to frustration from the business and limiting IT innovation as much of the budget goes to maintenance costs, specifically storage. Dont dismiss utility computing, whether internal, external or some mix, as a fadand dont see it as an existential threat to the way ITs done business for decades, either. Its a tool; for some, storage is probably the best use case for cloud, while others have legitimate worries. We need to do the hard work of figuring out the right mix of policies and technologies to balance access, performance vs. capacity, security, and short- and long-term cost. We need to figure out what, exactly, were paying per gigabyte for internal storage so we can do an intelligent total cost of ownership analysis for not only various cloud services but new techs like SSDs, deduplication and storage virtualization. Is Fibre Channel your future, or is it time to move to Ethernet? Do you need to revisit your tiering strategy? CIOs must look three to five years out and make sure their purchases today align with their long-term strategies. And clearly, you cant do that if you dont have a strategy.
Figure 2
Degree of Concern With On-Premises Storage Costs

How concerned is your organization with the overall cost of on-premises storage?
Very concerned; we must do something to rein in costs
26%
We do not use on-premises storage
3% 50% 21%
Somewhat concerned; costs are higher than we would like, but manageable
Not at all concerned; we are satisfied with our current costs
Base: 229 respondents at organizations using, planning to adopt or assessing public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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Lay Down the Law While vendors talk a lot about dealing with growing data volumes, many CIOs are thinking, Do we really need all this stuff? In most cases, the answer is yes. Analyzing massive amounts of data is how mature organizations spot customer trends, dive into analytics and leverage institutional knowledge to solve business problems. While litigation support and regulatory compliance were not the most significant drivers of storage growth in our survey, they surely contribute to the save everything mindset. A pressing problem is that the forces of cloud, mobility and consumerization are hastening the demise of the fat corporate desktop as we know it. Our InformationWeek Analytics 2011 End User Device Management Survey shows 67% of 550 respondents allow email to be accessed via employee-owned gear, and services like Dropbox are exploding in popularity. What that means for storage admins is that business content is now located on personal laptops, smartphones and tablets. This can create real problems for enterprises that wish to exercise a high level of
Figure 3
On-Premises Storage Costs

What are your organizations on-premises storage costs?
.10/GB-.30/GB Less than .10/GB
.30GB-.50/GB
10% 5%
15%
.50-.75/GB
9% 7% 10%
.75/GB-$1/GB
44%
Dont know
Over $1/GB
Base: 223 respondents at organizations using on-premises storage Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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backup, analysis, regulatory and compliance control over data while controlling the costs of storage. In response, vendors like Asigra and SugarSync have launched business-class off-site backup protection for mobile devices, and Apples iCloud is worth a look. But you need policies, not just technology, to solve this problem. Before even thinking about cloud storage, ensure that data retention rules are clear and accepted throughout the organization and that they define the types of data that will be stored and for how long, how quickly you need to get to it and how it will be accessed. Your data retention policy should be the basis of storage governance and for defining technology requirements. Without that base, youre just throwing storage dollars at problems, and the result is likely to be a depleted budget, underutilized technology and no ability to plan for future growth. Its encouraging that 89% of respondents have data retention policies in place, but enforcement
Figure 4
Data Retention Periods

What is your organizations current retention period for the following types of data?
Less than two years Two to five years Five to seven years Eight to ten years Indefinite No policy
Enterprise database/data warehouse
5% 10% 10%
12% 10% 15% 17% 13%
28% 6% 23% 12%
11% 23% 8% 5% 26% 8% 6% 11% 17%
30% 38% 23% 31% 7% 15% 44%
14%
R&D datasets Office documents/SharePoint
21%
Rich media (video/audio/imaging)
18%
Email
18%
Web (wiki/blog)
20% 17%
14%
14%
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seems to be a real challengejust 22% say employees comply. Drilling deeper, we also saw that policies vary by the type of application. Enterprise data warehouses and email stood out as areas where definitive data retention policies are most likely to exist; R&D data sets and Web content are least likely to be governed. But having a policy doesnt necessarily equate to a defined deletion date. We were surprised at the number of organizations with indefinite data retention requirements for enterprise database/data warehouse and Office documents/SharePointeven though we included up to 10 years as an option. These applications generate a lot of data, and we expect that these policies will be revisited as full costs become apparent. We worked with one client that wanted to store all its data for 20 yearsaccessible quickly (via disk) and indexed for search, so we laid out the cost. After the shock wore off, the company turned to a tiered approach, introducing more static media and slower access.
Figure 5
Data Retention Policy Compliance

How well do employees comply with your organizations data retention policy?
Extremely well
22%
What data retention policy?
11% 49% 18%

Somewhat well
Not very well
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Figure 6
Drivers of Storage Growth

Which of the following requirements and/or applications are driving storage growth?
Natural growth over time
82%
Email
59%
Increasing demand from new/planned applications
58%
Retention policy
53%
Enterprise database/data warehouse
45%
Increasing demand from existing applications
45%
Rich media (video/audio/imaging)
43%
Increasing demand for customer data
42%
Office documents/SharePoint
41%
Regulatory compliance
32%
Knowledge management/collaboration
31%
Litigation support
22%
R&D datasets
20%
Web (wiki/blog)
20%
Other
2%
Note: Multiple responses allowed Base: 229 respondents at organizations using, planning to adopt or assessing public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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Writing data retention policies is a report unto itself, but at minimum, consider how data will be used by the organization, searched and obtained if needed. That will drive the selection of storage technology and thus cost. With this understanding of your data and policies around storage and access, you then can build a long-term enterprise storage plan, including how you might integrate cloud services into the picture. The trick for cloud storage providers will be to offer fast access for large amounts of data at prices competitive with tape and off-site storage. And, oh yeah, securely, with privacy protection guaranteed. Before considering cloud storage services, be sure you have a good handle on data governance, that rules are enforceable and that the entire organization has been bought into the policy. Simply placing data governance policies in a document and storing it on a shelf wont satisfy regulators. Tools like EMC Centera and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager can assist in the enforcement of organizational and application policies and enable true governance. With Centera, as an example, you can preserve original content and provide a higher degree of integrity during the life of your archived information. Using application-based record retention and disposition, these policies can be enforced within the storage environment, improving corporate accountability, reducing the costs of e-discovery and enhancing internal controls. Before making any cloud storage decisions, ensure that your data governance tools can extend into the providers environment. You also must ensure you have the ability to manage a mixed environment. The way storage is typically allocated todaycentrallydoes not make the best use of capacity. For example, lets say you have 500 GBs of storage. If five business divisions each request 100 GB for their applications, youve allocated all of your storage, so its time to buy more, right? Thats how many shops function. However, its likely that those five business units actually use, on average, 50 GB of their allocated storage, meaning you still have 50% capacity remaining. Or maybe accounting uses just 20%, but manufacturing is constantly running up against its limit. Without the tools to actively manage usage, you will not have the visibility to determine when you really do need additional capacity and where it should go. Most of our survey respondents, 54%, use vendor-provided utilities to manage their storage systems. In our experience, these shops are unlikely to have the depth of visibility they need to
14 June 2011

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make informed decisions. Especially in multivendor infrastructures, tools like Nexenta Systems NexentaStor, Quantum StorNext and Quest Foglight Storage that can provide an overall view into storage allocation and utilization will pay for themselves by helping you delay adding capacity, while also aiding enforcement of data governance policies.
The Economics of Storage Our InformationWeek Analytics Cloud ROI Survey showed that the top three reasons companies are using or evaluating public cloud services are the ability to quickly roll out business technology, an expectation that long-term expenses will be lower and to reduce the number of activities that require in-house IT expertise. Replacing capital expenses with operational expense was at No. 4. With respect to storage, those issues are of less concern for enterprises. Like gravity, storage
Figure 7
Tools Used to Manage Storage Systems

What tools are used by your organization to manage storage systems?
Dont know
14%
We do not manage storage resources Other
8% 1%
53%
Tools provided by our storage vendor
24%
Third-party storage resource management vendors
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prices historically have fallen; 21% say theyre not at all concerned with storage costs. Half say theyre somewhat concerned but see costs as manageable. Buying more storage is a lot easier than trying to get a handle on how it is used, says the IT director of a global financial institution. While this attitude makes hardware vendors happy, it isnt sustainable. Nearly half (44%) of respondents dont even know the per-gigabyte cost of their on-premises storage, so how can they know expenditures are manageable? Now, figuring out how much any IT service costs is tough. We werent surprised that few of the 551 respondents to our End User Device Management Survey charge back or do cost allocations. Of the 122 who do, 83% charge only for the purchase price of the device and OS plus software required for the job role. Network and server assets? Forget itand this is for something as relatively simple as an end-user device. Its no wonder that breaking down storage is a tall order. Do you include power? Maintenance and support? Data center floor space? However, you cant make an informed decision on the financials of outsourcing any given function until you know about what it costs to deliver internally over three to five years. Data governance will help provide this visibility. Tom Scroggins, an IT architect with a financial services group, pegs his cost per gigabyte at the high end of our respondents range but goes beyond just the raw disk to include RAID levels and arrive at a per-usable-gigabyte price, which is cost allocated to business units. Currently the main benefit of cloud-based storage is variability, Scroggins says. We can provide our own geographic diversity and can purchase storage as cheap, or cheaper, than the cloud providers deliver. Hes also constrained by regulatory requirements and says services with sufficient controls to appeal to financial and healthcare institutions are likely a few years away. If youre moving toward an IT service management structure, you, like Scroggins, likely have a better-than-average understanding of your environment, but our survey found some knowledge gaps. And our experience shows that a lack of visibility into elements of a service, such as cost and utilization, results in IT taking the path of least resistancein this case, buying more onpremises storage. Only by dissecting the technical composition of any given service can you judge whether youre using the best technology or delivering the service in the most cost-effective way. In fact, we believe that a greater maturity around service management will be good for public cloud providers.
16 June 2011

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Why Not Go Virtual? From a technology perspective, 95% of respondents use hard-disk-based systems for their onpremises storage needs. More than half also use magnetic tape, and optical disks (28%) and solid-state drives (23%) fill in at the high end to create a tiered environment that can be tailored to the access demands of various classes of data. Given the comfort bred from long experience with these technologiesin some cases, decadesand regulatory requirements, it will clearly be challenging for large enterprises to embrace public storage services. However, given widespread use of server virtualization, we did expect to see movement toward on-site virtualized storage systems that negate security and privacy concerns and can still save big bucks. 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; 18% say they wont use virtualized storage at all. Unlike server virtualization, few in our survey see the value in virtual storage and the ability to create more dense storage environments.
Figure 8
Current Distribution of Storage Capacity

What percentage of your overall storage capacity is currently represented by each of the following?
None 1-9 percent 10-24 percent 25-49 percent 50-74 percent 75-99 percent 100 percent
Direct-attached storage
3%
16% 16% 19% 17% 7% 48%
26% 18% 10% 22%
21% 17% 18% 25%
11% 17%
16% 11% 19% 8% 6%
7% 4% 5% 8% 2%3%
Network attached storage, on premises Storage area network, on premises Private cloud (virtualized) storage Public cloud storage
61%
21%
4% 6% 5% 2% 1%
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A plurality seems content with the status quo of on-premises, Tier 1 SANs. Why? One key benefit of outsourcing storage is shifting the burden of capacity and performance management as well as overall operations and maintenance to the provider. Not so with internally virtualized environments, where organizations likely believe that benefits dont outweigh the cost and effort to deploy and manage. This reflects what were seeing: Only in extremely large enterprises does the community of users and applications justify the manpower overhead of a virtualized storage environment.
32 Flavors Once you get a handle on your data retention policy and the cost of internally delivered storage and put management tools in place, you have what you need to analyze the most cost-efficient, reliable and secure way to deliver the storage services needed by the business. The term cloud storage is clearly imprecise, so in our poll we drilled down into various aspects, such as backFigure 9
Distribution of Storage Capacity in Two Years

What percentage of your overall storage capacity do you predict will be represented by each of the following 24 months from now?
None 1-9 percent 10-24 percent 25-49 percent 50-74 percent 75-99 percent 100 percent
Direct-attached storage
7% 13% 18% 19%

Public cloud storage
29% 9% 13% 22% 17% 25%
22% 23% 20% 18% 16% 23%
18% 19% 15%
13% 18% 14% 18% 10% 10%
8% 3% 5% 9% 10% 2% 2%
Storage area network, on premises Private cloud (virtualized) storage Network attached storage, on premises
23%
6% 3%
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up or email archiving or 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, or be used for email archiving, application disaster recovery, data continuity or just about any other system. Vendors such as GoGrid, Peer1 and Rackspace are also offering managed on-site services that make it easier for IT to virtualize storage within the enterprise data center and provide for scalability and management in a much denser environment. Hybrid approaches from vendors may combine public and private, allowing for bursting into the providers data center when capacity is exceeded or running specific applications in a hybrid environment to improve performance across a highly distributed geographical area. Even with all these options, our survey found very limited adoption rates. A mere 15% say theyre using public storage services. An even lower 10% composite say theyre exploring adopting within the next two years. Not good news for vendors.
Figure 10
Functions Moved to Public Cloud Storage

What functions have or would you consider moving to public cloud storage?
Backup
76%
Disaster recovery/business continuity
70%
File archiving
68%
Email archiving
65%
Primary data storage
34%
Other
3%
Note: Multiple responses allowed Base: 229 respondents at organizations using, planning to adopt or assessing public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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19 June 2011

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Figure 11
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Reasons for Not Adopting Public Cloud Storage Services

Why isnt your organization adopting public cloud storage services?
Security concerns
73%
Privacy concerns
54%
Regulatory/legal constraints
36%
No concrete business case
31%
Lack of control
28%
Potential data loss
27%
Data availability concerns
23%
Reliability/performance concerns
23%
Vendor lock in
14%
Insufficient network capacity
12%
Long-term TCO (total cost of ownership)
12%
Not well understood
11%
Data portability concerns
8%
Geographic location of service provider
8%
Vendor viability
6%
Too complex
4%
Other
10%
Note: Multiple responses allowed Base: 134 respondents at organizations with no plans to use public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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While 38% are still considering how to proceed, 37% have decided that they have no plans to look outside for storage. While marketing of public clouds is hot, potential buyers are cautious. So whats the barrier? Its the same old story: Security, privacy, reliability and performance, potential for data loss, and availability lead the list of inhibitors. Regulatory and legal constraints are also of great concern to 39% or respondents. Those are some pretty big barriers for vendors to overcome. Most in our survey recognize that providers have the ability to deliver on their promises, with only 6% responding that vendor viability was a roadblock. The problem is, few can promise the levels of security needed. The willingness to store data off site also varies greatly by industryhealthcare, financial, legal and others may never move to cloud storage. There is too much risk relying on the Internet and other networks/data centers to store medical imaging and reporting, says Eric Nied, CIO with Radiology Ltd. From another healthcare IT pro: Availability/uptime is a major concern. Even recently, Google has experienced multihour outages; this is unacceptable. Our information is sensitive and highly regulated, adds 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 open to public storage services, backup, disaster recovery, and file and email archiving are most likely to be under consideration. When we touched on primary data storage, the numbers fell off dramatically. Scroggins says he sees smaller companies as the sweet spot for service providers, whose data protection practices may be an improvement over what an SME could afford on its own. But as we hear about successful breaches of corporations such as CitiBank, Nasdaq, PBS and Sony, we cant help but wonder whether large enterprises might want to compare the security a storage provider like EMC or Hewlett-Packard could provide.
21 June 2011

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Figure 12
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Importance of Cloud Storage Features

How important are the following features when using or evaluating a cloud storage service? Please use a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not important and 5 is very important.
1 Not at all concerned Very concerned 5
Ability to move data between cloud and on-premises storage
4.4
On-demand access
4.3
Data encryption
4.3
Ability to establish/enforce retention policy
4.3
Network encryption
4.2
Monitoring tools
4.1
Compatibility with legacy systems/processes, e.g., Active Directory
4.1
SLAs
4.1
Reporting (usage and compliance)
4.0
Geographic redundancy
3.9
Wide support for transfer protocols (SCP, FTP, SAMBA/CIFS, RSYNC)
3.9
Native file system support (mount point)
3.9
Instant scalability
3.8
Integrity policy reporting
3.8
Data compression
3.7
Deduplication
3.7
Limitless scalability
3.6
Note: Mean average ratings Base: 229 respondents at organizations using, planning to adopt or assessing public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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Bells and Whistles Respondents moving down the path of outsourced storage named more than 30 vendors as being in use or under consideration. Not surprising, at the top of the list were longstanding storage vendors HP and EMC. Amazon S3 was slightly ahead of IBM and Oracle for vendor consideration. Other names that scored high on the list include Barracuda Backup, Carbonite, Hitachi, Rackspace Cloud Files and Mozy (owned by EMC), showing the diversity of services that are on offer, from capacity and software tailored for email archiving, backup or collaboration to raw infrastructure capacity. When considering outsourced storage:
G
Drill deep into integration capabilities. No one wants a new silocreating a unified IT environment and ensuring that you have the ability to freely move data between off- and onpremises storage is the most critical feature. Insist on real-time, on-demand access to data that enhances the business. This includes unified search. Be realistic about regulations. Slinging FUD to avoid considering services is a good way to
Figure 13
Types of On-Premises Storage Used

What types of on-premises storage do you use?
Hard disk-based
95%
Magnetic tape-based
53%
Optical disks
28%
Solid-state disk
25%
Other
2%
Note: Multiple responses allowed Base: 223 respondents at organizations using on-premises storage Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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lose credibility. Our biggest concern with public cloud storage is strict laws on retention polices, says one respondent. A simple policy from the cloud vendor to use deduplication could break state laws regarding original file source. Now, were not providing legal advice, but right now a government agency could ask any online service to provide the names of all users who have a particular file, whether or not the service employs deduplication. So check with counsel before issuing blanket statements.
G
Still, encryption and security must be mastered, no matter where you keep your data. The current standard is AES-256 bit encryption, but this will add a level of latency when data is unencrypted back within your environment. In the recent Sony security breach, stored password credentials used not encryption but a hashwhich can easily be broken. As we have seen, on-premises does not always equate to strong security. Whether sensitive data lives in your data center or a providers, make sure its encrypted. Make sure your retention and deletion policies will be carried over and enforced. Get details on the technology used, to understand if a record or backup of data is kept even when information is removed. Otherwise, e-discovery requests could land you in hot water. Monitoring tools should clearly show usage and performance statistics and cost breakdowns and provide a way to export data so you can integrate it into your own reporting tools. Monitoring systems should also provide visibility into service-level agreements to ensure that the provider is performing per the terms of the contract. Since there is a lot to the management aspect (SLAs, usage, compliance, integrity reporting, integration) ensure that the interface is easy to useduring an outage is not the time to find out that you cant get insight. Mind the where. The Amazon data center outage in April, although a result of a human configuration error, exposes another issue: geographic redundancy. You must understand how the providers architecture deals with major disruptions like the one Amazon experienced. As a result of the outage, we learned that redundancy existed within the data center, but geographic failover to other locations was not inherent within Amazons design. Understanding these what-if scenarios is important when selecting a partner. Its not enough to get high-level information; there must be a degree of compatibility that exists between the provider and your enterprise IT policies. As the vendor changes its environment, you also need to ensure that you have a formal notification mechanism and the right to conduct regular reviews. The smaller your organization is, the less willing the vendor will be to accommodate special
24 June 2011

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requests, but key considerations will be the geographic location of your data, backup, continuity of operations, speed to access, application access mechanisms, encryption, physical and data security policies, and fees and triggers for space and any network bandwidth charges.
G
Ensure that you can communicate. You never know what applications will need storage resources in the future, so when extending your IT infrastructure, ensure that a variety of communications mechanisms exist. Seamless integration is the ideal, so vendors should provide for wide support of Web services APIs to enable a service-oriented architecture as well as transfer protocols such as SCP, Samba and CIFS. A native file system mount point may also be a requirement. Leave room to grow. If you expect a lot of bursting, the ability to quickly and seamlessly scale the amount of data stored with the provider will be important. This is especially valuable for new services and untested applications, where youre uncertain of the amount of storage capacity needed. The cost of this scalability should be spelled out, along with any caps or advanced notice required to significantly expand the storage resources consumed. If you scale up, you also need to be sure you can just as easily scale back down. With many vendors, adding capacity is easy; removing it is not. Compression and deduplication ranked at the bottom of list of desired features. This is surprising as they directly affect capacity use, and thus cost. Compression rates should be published. Remember that not all data compresses well, most notably images, and typically, encrypted data will not enjoy the same level of compression as unencrypted data. Storage compression for file and block data is useful, if you have control over how blocks are laid down on disk. Deduplication first gained traction as a technology to enhance disk backup. At a basic level, deduplication technology examines data and compares it to data thats already stored. If a duplicate is found, instead of storing that copy, the system establishes a reference point to the original data. Significantly less space is needed to establish a link than to physically store the file. Public storage providers embed compression and deduplication technology into their offerings to drive their costs as low as possible.
25 June 2011

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Figure 14
R e p o r t s
Public Cloud Storage Concerns

How concerned are you with each of the following factors when using public cloud storage? Please use a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not at all concerned and 5 is very concerned.
1 Not at all concerned Very concerned 5
Data security
4.6
Privacy
4.6
Reliability/performance
4.4
Potential data loss
4.4
Data availability
4.2
Network capacity
4.0
Lack of control
4.0
Regulatory/legal constraints
3.9
Vendor viability
3.9
Long-term TCO (total cost of ownership)
3.9
Vendor lock in
3.9
Data portability
3.8
Geographic location of service provider
3.4
Complexity of the technology
3.4
Note: Mean average ratings Base: 229 respondents at organizations using, planning to adopt or assessing public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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Vendor Choices Amazon offers a number of storage services, with varying degrees of performance and the ability to map back to defined tiers. The Simple Storage Service is highly scalable and available and designed for mission-critical primary storage. With it Amazon is targeting NAS and SAN replacement or augmentation. S3 may be most useful for big-data storage as there is no need to partition data into containers. For large-scale analysis and business intelligence this is extremely valuable. EMC Atmos can be deployed in a hybrid environment. One of the most interesting elements of Atmos is intelligent policy-based management. Embedded policies will distribute content based on business rules and data values. For example, information that is current and classified as valuable may be defined premium and therefore require more copies in more locations than information that is older and accessed less frequently. The older information may be compressed and retained with fewer copies in fewer locations. While IT must still define the policies, Atmos can trigger them proactively (and automatically) or reactively, based on changing business conditions or characteristics of the content. In highly distributed geographic environments, EMCs GeoMirror capability can create multiple copies of an object and distribute them to multiple locations, while the GeoParity capability divides objects into segments and distributes them to designated locations. These RAID-like and mirroring features can be invaluable for protecting critical data. Hitachis focus is on dynamically adding virtual storage directors, ports, cache and capacity to a control chassis. Its systems are designed to support increased demand in virtualized server environments by dynamically combining multiple control chassis into a logical system with shared resources. Partitioning of cache, ports and access control based on resource group might help organizations focus on quality of services Hitachi also extends its Virtual Storage Platform by supporting multiple hypervisors. In one of the most expensive acquisitions of 2010, Hewlett-Packard acquired 3Par as the crown jewel of its storage service platform. Like many big vendors, HP is seeking to create integrated systems across private, public and hybrid environments. In its CloudSystem, the company places a big focus on automating management and provisioning across storage and other infrastructure and application elements. The architecture allows a single HP 3Par Utility Storage system to serve as a consolidation platform to deliver the storage performance and quality of service needed for diverse workloads. Its not inexpensive but can represent a savings over architecting a hybrid system in-house.
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Some lesser-known vendors are also working to differentiate themselves. Cleversafe created Information Dispersal Algorithms for slicing data into unrecognizable pieces and dispersing it across multiple locations. By using this kind of encryption and sharing, the company says enterprises can secure massive amounts of data. The speed to read the data is highly dependent on your network links. The best speeds achieved in tests on gigabit networks is about 40 Mbps, although some users reported similar access times on slower networks. For on-premises virtualized storage, increased density is the trend. Nexsans systems include 3-TB SATA drives180 TBs in 4U of rack space. With ITs focus on higher throughput, scaling
Figure 15
Storage Resource Management Vendors Used

What storage resource management vendors do you use?
Quantum StorNext
36%
CA/Nimsoft
27%
Quest Foglight Storage
18%
NexentaStor
16%
DataCore SANsymphony
13%
Balesio AG Fileminimizer
7%
GlusterFS
4%
Other
20%
Dont know
7%
Note: Multiple responses allowed Base: 55 respondents at organizations using third-party storage resource management vendors Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
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and interoperability, vendors will continue to push the envelope for high-density, high-performance systems. For smaller companies, Cteras Cloud Attached Storage combines off-site storage with on-premises appliances, promising enterprise-grade performance without many of the deployment and maintenance concerns involved with a hybrid system.
Your Strategy For large enterprises, we expect storage service vendors will become just another tier, used for specific needs. How extensive that use is depends on how well vendors reassure CIOs on security and availability. Another roadblock: We have yet to see a product that does a good job managing a hybrid, multivendor set of enterprise storage as a single unified environment. Still, we have to do something. It was only a few years ago that we learned to talk about gigabytes; we have now progressed to terabytes and petabytes. Our 2011 State of Storage Survey found that 9% of respondents already have more than a petabyte of data under management. How long will it be before we start talking in terms of exabytes, zettabytes and yottabytes? A few years? A few months? No one knows for sure, but that time will inevitably come. The existence of such huge amounts of data has become a hot-button issue for many enterprises, and off-site storage will likely play some role in the overall strategy. While a data retention policy is a big part of the equation, you must also get a handle on the amount of data handled by your organization and the rate at which data is accumulating. In one client, we saw 80% growth rate per year. Remember, when you buy a SAN, you know what it costs. When you hire a provider, you also need to know what the service youre contracting for will cost over three to five years. Security, from a data protection as well as a privacy perspective, costs money. Its expensive to do internally and for providers. Apply risk-management principles, just as you would when deciding what level of redundancy makes sense for any given data type. With a handle on security, seek to create a single pool of virtualized block, file and content storage resources to support diverse uses. This might involve private, public and hybrid options. A key success factor will be to build the system at your own pace and in a way that
29 June 2011

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best addresses your needs and leverages your existing IT investments. Watch words are reliability, scalability, multitenancy and multitiering. To gain greater performance, integrate search, migration and archiving capabilitiesbe sure to develop requirements before considering venFigure 16
Cloud Storage Vendors

What cloud storage vendors are in use, or are being considered for use, at your organization?
HP EMC Amazon S3 IBM Oracle Barracuda Backup Carbonite Hitachi Rackspace Cloud Files Mozy CTERA Eucalyptus 3X Systems Axcient Google JoyentCloud Mezeo Nasuni Symform Zetta Egnyte GoGrid Intronics Vembu Other We have not evaluated vendors yet
Note: Multiple responses allowed Base: 92 respondents at organizations using or planning to adopt public cloud storage services Data: InformationWeek Analytics Public Cloud Storage Survey of 363 business technology professionals, April 2011
30% 26% 25% 21% 16% 14% 14% 10% 8% 6% 5% 5% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 2% 2% 2% 2% 26% 14%
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dors. That said, you also need to ensure that a cloud migration doesnt force you to replace or rewrite your applications. We often see clients wrestle with legacy applications that do not support virtualized servers or virtualized storage. A few outliers are manageable, but if number of important applications fall into this category, you wont achieve the full benefits of cloud storage. For now, consider other use cases and workloads. When you go through a technology refresh and update or eliminate problematic applications, reconsider a hybrid on- and offpremises storage architecture. Unfortunately, instead of legacy devices inheriting cloud attributes, we see organizations examining the cloud as just another storage silo. Needless to say, this is the wrong approach.
31 June 2011

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Appendix
Figure 17
Company Revenue
Which of the following dollar ranges includes the annual revenue of your entire organization?
Less than $6 million
$6 million to $49.9 million
12%
Dont know/decline to say
18%
8% 10% 10% 15% 10%
Government/non-profit
$5 billion or more $1 billion to $4.9 billion
12%
5%
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Figure 18
Company Size
Approximately how many employees are in your organization?
50-99 Less than 50
100-499
5% 5%
28%
10,000 or more
21%
12%
500-999
8%
5,000-9,999
21%
1,000-4,999
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Figure 19
Industry
What is your organizations primary industry?
Construction/engineering
2%
Consulting and business services
4%
Distributor
2%
Education
15%
Electronics
2%
Financial services
11%
Government
14%
Healthcare/medical
8%
Insurance/HMOs
4%
IT vendors
7%
Logistics/transportation
2%
Manufacturing/industrial, non-computer
7%
Non-profit
3%
Telecommunications/ISPs
4%
Utilities
3%
Other
12%
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Figure 20
Job Title
Which of the following best describes your job title?
IT/IS staff
37%
Director/manager, IT or infrastructure
10%
Director/manager, other IT
8%
Director/manager, IT operations
7%
CIO
5%
Consultant
5%
Director/manager, network systems
4%
Line-of-business management
3%
Vice president, IT or infrastructure
3%
CEO/president
3%
CSO (chief security officer)/security management
2%
Security staff
2%
Other
11%
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Want More Like This?

Making the right technology choices is a challenge for IT teams everywhere. Whether its sorting through vendor claims, justifying new projects or implementing new systems, theres no substitute for experience. And thats what InformationWeek Analytics providesanalysis and advice from IT professionals. Our subscription-based site houses more than 800 reports and briefs, and more than 100 new reports are slated for release in 2011. InformationWeek Analytics members have access to:
Research: Storage & File Virtualization: Storage virtualization enables IT to eliminate

storage volumes with hard characteristics, while file virtualization is about abstracting the link between files themselves and their references. The result? Freedom for IT and usersfrom regimented storage structures. Whats not to like?
Research: 2011 Outsourcing Survey: Were not willing to fight to hire talent, opting
instead to outsource more and more. Yet, were also not investing in the management tools and skills needed to deliver top-notch services from this hodgepodge of cloud, SaaS and conventional providers and internal IT assets.
Research: 2011 State of Cloud: Our 2011 cloud computing survey shows healthy
growth in use of these services. But are IT teams neglecting their bread-and-butter fundamentals?
Strategy: Unified Computing Stack Wars: The fight is on for hegemony in next-gen data centers as vendors including HP, IBM and Cisco erase the boundaries among server, network and storage suppliers. The battle lines are drawn, but do the benefits of a prebuilt system outweigh the drawbacks of subscribing to a single vendors technol ogy vision and product road map?
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June 2011 $99 Analytics.InformationWeek.

Changing D ynamics B eyond S er vices

Report ID: R2750611

New Storage Dynamics

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New Storage Dynamics

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New Storage Dynamics

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New Storage Dynamics

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New Storage Dynamics

ABOUT US | InformationWeek Analytics experienced analysts arm business technology

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New Storage Dynamics

Approach to Public Cloud Storage Services

We have no plans to use public cloud storage services

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New Storage Dynamics

Impact Assessment: Storage Virtualization

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New Storage Dynamics

Degree of Concern With On-Premises Storage Costs

Very concerned; we must do something to rein in costs

We do not use on-premises storage

Not at all concerned; we are satisfied with our current costs

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New Storage Dynamics

On-Premises Storage Costs

.10/GB-.30/GB Less than .10/GB

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New Storage Dynamics

Data Retention Periods

Enterprise database/data warehouse

12% 10% 15% 17% 13%

28% 6% 23% 12%

11% 23% 8% 5% 26% 8% 6% 11% 17%

30% 38% 23% 31% 7% 15% 44%

R&D datasets Office documents/SharePoint

Rich media (video/audio/imaging)

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New Storage Dynamics

Data Retention Policy Compliance

What data retention policy?

11% 49% 18%

Not very well

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New Storage Dynamics

Drivers of Storage Growth

Natural growth over time

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New Storage Dynamics

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New Storage Dynamics

Tools Used to Manage Storage Systems

Tools provided by our storage vendor

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New Storage Dynamics

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New Storage Dynamics

Current Distribution of Storage Capacity

16% 16% 19% 17% 7% 48%

26% 18% 10% 22%