Where Data
Pays Off
Businesses of all sizes
are looking to Storage-as-a-Service solutions
to meet security and
regulatory requirements.
Iron Mountain recently
talked with Doug Chandler,
research director, IDC
Infrastructure Services
Research, about the
emerging use of Storage-as-a-Service.
Q. What are online backup and archival
storage services, and why is the market
poised for tremendous growth?
A. IDC defines online backup as
a discrete service specifically
designed and delivered to serve
secondary data storage—that is,
data backed up from a primary
data store. The service is typically designed for either servers or
PCs, and provided by a third party,
usually on a subscription-pricing
basis. It nearly always involves the
transmission of data over a private
or public network to a provider-run data center, where the data
is stored and made available for
retrieval. It’s important to note
that the retrieval/recovery piece
is where the real value lies for the
customer.
Online or hosted archiving to
date has mostly focused on the
retention of email for extended
periods, but IDC believes that
customers will archive other kinds
of data in the future using online
services. We forecast double-digit
growth for spending across online
backup and archiving services
through 2011, on a compound
annual growth basis.
Q. What should IT decision makers look
for in an offsite data protection and
storage service?
A. The long-term viability of the
service provider is very important
to customers, especially business customers that may be used
to procuring data protection and
storage technology from large
OEMs. They want a similar feeling of security with the service
provider, so a company that’s been
in the market for a while, with a
track record and references, has
an advantage. Also, customers not
only need to back up or archive
data with a service provider, but
they also need that data to be
actively available, in the event
of litigation, audit or another
event. So providers that can make
that happen and provide support
around this are going to be in
demand.
One thing to look for is tiered
levels of service, because one size
doesn’t fit all. You want choices of
performance levels, which should
give you pricing choices tied to
those levels. Also, you should look
at the security available, both the
physical security of the data center
and the security of the network
handling the data, such as whether
the provider uses encryption.
Q. At what rate do you expect Storage-
as-a-Service to be adopted by midsize
and large enterprises?
A. Larger businesses are slower
than smaller businesses to adopt
online backup services because
they tend to have dedicated IT
departments, even dedicated
people for storage and backup.
They’ve made bigger investments
over time, with higher service
requirements. It’s a major changeover to outsource that service—
the larger the enterprise, the larger
the decision.
That’s why we’re seeing adoption happening from the bottom
up—from the consumer, small
businesses and some midsize
businesses. Most small businesses
don’t have a dedicated IT staff,
or if they do, the staff is spread
thin across all kinds of things like
managing applications and servers. Ensuring that tape backup
processes are working correctly is
typically far down on the priority
list, usually because of time pressures. So for many of these firms,
the decision to outsource the process can be a relatively easy one. ▲
