Which storage solution is the right solution?
As the volume and types of data expand and the speed at which data is generated increases, effective data storage and back-up remain a key element of every organisation’s ICT strategy. The available options are assessed.
Data seems to be on everybody’s lips these days. More data has been created within the past few years that humankind has produced — ever.
Data is incredibly important for businesses because it helps them to expose variability and optimize their operations for the highest quality results.
Whether companies are dealing with “big data” or just a growing heap of business data that needs to be stored and managed and, most important, companies must be able to restore critical business data in the event of human error, hardware or software failure or security breach.
I believe effective data management is a mix of skills, technologies and procedures: here is where the magic happens.
But let me try to answer some critical questions about how you’ll handle all that data.
Enterprises are not only contending with mountains of archived data, they must also handle data streaming in continually from many disparate sources, including websites, social media accounts, transactions, and IoT devices. So, which storage solution is the right solution?
All of the talks about Storage-as-a-Service, software-defined storage, and on-premises versus cloud can get confusing. It’s important to remember that all storage — whether virtualised or “in the cloud” does still rely on physical servers. The virtualisation changes merely the nature of the storage, distributing it across servers so that storage-related resources are utilized optimally.
In reality, there are three primary groups of storage to choose from, and fortunately, it isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Here are the considerations you need to make regarding on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid data storage.
When considering onsite data storage, many businesses don’t realise the affordable solutions available now. You don’t have to break the IT budget for the year to accommodate your growing storage needs.
On-premises storage gives you full control of your data and data management. Many enterprises opt for on-premises storage to adhere to compliance regulations, while others choose on-premises for control and to eliminate latency. The primary downsides to on-premises data storage are the space, staff, and expense it takes to house the data storage.
But on-premises storage no longer requires enormous capital expenditures on hardware like servers and storage infrastructure.
Viatel’s storage-as-a-service is now available on site, so that companies can continue to protect and manage their data in-house, while still taking advantage of low-cost leasing options.
The primary advantage of cloud-based data storage is cost savings, but it goes beyond that. With cloud-based storage, you can cut the IT staff’s workload, freeing them for more productive tasks that actually benefit the company’s bottom line. Instead of having your IT teams tied up managing data and maintaining servers, they can put their efforts toward other projects that actually increase your revenue.
Cloud-based storage also takes considerably less space, freeing your square footage for a bigger sales team or more production employees. Cloud data storage is also a greener alternative, reducing your carbon footprint by many times. Cloud storage also means shifting these expenses to the operational expense side of your business ledger, because there are no more costly servers and equipment to buy.
The downside to most enterprises is having their data off-premises. This can present certain challenges, such as adhering to compliance regulations.
Viatel Cloud is based in Ireland and our storage infrastructure allows us to allocate physical drives to a single customer, in other words, the same security and performance of onsite storage will all the flexibility of the cloud!
Fortunately, the cloud isn’t all-or-nothing. Most enterprises opt for a nice middle ground with the hybrid cloud.
The hybrid cloud allows you to configure your data storage in a way that makes sense for your business, keeping sensitive data onsite and utilizing affordable cloud storage for the other data. It’s especially handy for customer-facing apps, archiving data, and essential backup storage.
The hybrid cloud allows the enterprise to leverage that low-cost, easy-to-maintain cloud storage, while still keeping the mission-critical data onsite. For example, some companies opt to utilize the cloud for archived data or for virtualizing their work desktops, keeping their current workloads and application data onsite. Others use the cloud for customer-facing applications and the onsite side of their data storage for employee applications and related data.
The beauty of the hybrid cloud is that you can cut data storage costs tremendously, without giving up the control associated with on-premises storage.
Viatel makes hybrid cloud possible – in any form – through his software-defined network that supports any access and is always on, connecting your premises to our datacentres and expanding into major public cloud providers.
Today Hybrid IT is norm form most organizations but these complex architecture blending datacentres, private and public clouds with siloed legacy systems create multiple points of failure when it comes to protecting critical business data in the event of human error, hardware or software failure, security breach or natural disaster. Even a few minutes of downtime can mean lost revenue, dissatisfied customers and missed opportunities to get and stay ahead in a competitive market.
Creating a resilient environment isn’t an easy task. It takes a lot of effort analysing and documenting the hybrid architecture and recovery processes on an on-going basis to keep pace with IT and business changes. Companies must expand their thinking beyond just backing up data.
At Viatel, we are a team of passionate professionals with the mission to empowering SME in Ireland to achieve more.
We combine high skilled experienced engineers with the best-of-breed technologies to design and build secure backup and recovery services in line with the most demanding RPOs and RTOs.
Our flexible and scalable storage capacity help customers coping with continuously changing requirements.
By operating the entire technology stack, from your premise to the public cloud, we allow you to build true business resilience and do business with confidence.
