Interviews

STaaS can help address the challenges associated with data explosion

Storage-as-a-service is the next big as-a-service trend that is taking over industries and helping organisations transform digitally with optimized costs. In this exclusive interaction with CXOToday, Sanjay Agrawal, Technology Head, Hitachi Vantara talks about the various ways in which data explosion can strain businesses and why storage-as-a-service is a suitable solution to help tackle this challenge.

 

  • How does data growth strain businesses?

Thanks to digital transformation, data is growing at an exponential pace. This growth spans across the entire data landscape ranging from structured to semi-structured to unstructured data. Unstructured data alone is expected to triple in size over the next three years. This has led to the trend of organisations moving away from conventional business models to those that leverage data to obtain actionable insights to improve operations, enhance customer experience and accelerate revenue.

This change in business perception is shifting the IT focus to store, manage, and protect data as per compliance with restricted funds to procure unlimited data storage. This leaves very limited resources for business innovations. Functions like storage demand scaling, security, data protection and ransomware protection are all being negatively impacted. The storage capacity requirements within a modern data center change frequently leading to complications with planning and delivery along with increased costs.

 

  • How can leveraging storage-as-a-service help in tackling data explosion?

STaaS is a sustainable solution that can help address the challenges associated with data explosion. With this approach, the financial burden is minimised by eliminating the high CAPEX cost that is generally paid upfront. Utilising the OPEX model with the option of utility pricing, organisations can start small with STaaS and pay as per data growth as they expand their business. This also shifts the burden of technology upgradation and data management to the STaaS provider, thereby freeing up budgets and IT teams to focus on the core business. This also enables the CIOs to shift their focus to innovations for the business without worrying about IT management or the implications of business expansion on their data management.

 

  • What are the 3 major benefits for enterprises in adopting storage-as-a-service solutions?
  1. Optimized operational costs- The shift from CAPEX to OPEX will result in substantial savings. The Pay-Per-Use (PPU) or consumption-based pricing (CBP) model eliminates the cost of reserve capacity. Storage costs with STaaS tend to be lower than on-prem infrastructure, which is highly useful for businesses.
  2. Increased flexibility- By taking the STaaS approach, organisations can be assured that additional capacity is at the ready when they need it. Some STaaS providers also deliver features such as automation, monitoring, reporting and predictive analytics to provide valuable insights needed to make a bigger impact on the business.
  3. Increased focus on business innovations- IT Managers and administrators are freed up from data and storage management functions, while being equipped with the data and system intelligence to grow their business.

 

  • What are some current/future trends expected in the storage-as-a-service segment?

The most recent trend in the STaaS segment include managed services being an integral part of the offerings by providers. This ensures that operational management is being done by the provider, enabling higher IT and business service-level agreements (SLAs). This way, the provider is able to implement superior technologies, tools and best practices to facilitate the IT team to deliver maximum SLAs.

This service is no longer confined to structured business data but also includes unstructured data being gathered from humans and machines. This space will see further innovation as the market progresses, where providers will focus on employing end-to-end data management and creating stronger integrations across multiple end-customer experiences.

The increased adoption of STaaS is driven by a megatrend that is gaining momentum significantly – making all data center IT resources increasingly cloud-like to enable the shift to hybrid cloud.

Hybrid cloud is another trend converging with STaaS as this service can be offered on-prem as well as at the cloud service provider.

 

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