We’re living in the early days of decentralized Web3 data storage.

While Web3 won’t replace the centralized cloud-based Web2 storage options entirely, leading businesses are exploring the possibilities. Mercedes-Benz launched a data-sharing network and Microsoft invested in a startup to bridge the gap between centralized and decentralized databases.

Web2 has been the predominant industry standard for years, and users have grown accustomed to the speed and capabilities that come with it. However, according to IDC, by 2026 the global data market is expected to exceed 221 zettabytes. As the datasphere grows, data storage solutions will need to evolve to keep up with organizations’ cost requirements, data security and availability needs. This is where Web3 comes in, as the storage and retrieval mechanisms that will allow Web3 to pass the Web2 standards are in rapid development.

Although Web3 data storage isn’t ready for large-scale enterprise applications just yet, business leaders are increasingly recognizing its potential. Public cloud has been great at enabling innovation and is likely to continue in this role, but it is smart to plan for the future. Web3 will enable better data democratization and information-sharing opportunities, which will revolutionize the way we store and share data.

How Web3 Can Revolutionize Data Storage

Data control is one of enterprises’ biggest issues. Centralized storage has many benefits, but it also entrusts a single entity to manage vital data flows. Often, this results in high egress and retention fees – creating a gap between how companies want to use data and what they actually do with it. This approach can also invite cyberattacks, network failures, or outages, which are all detrimental to an organization’s revenue and reputation. Web3’s decentralized storage is far from mainstream adoption because of challenges related to scalability, integration, and energy resources. However, it is emerging as a strategic alternative because of its valuable ability to offer immutable, persistent, and replicated data. Through this process, it also offers cost-effective protection against ransomware attacks. Simultaneously, Web3 is built to provide significant protection from nefarious geopolitical censorship policies, and it creates more flexibility in access.

As the Web3 ecosystem continues to grow organically, organizations and services will emerge to assist with the business migration to Web3-enabled protocols. Cloud storage providers (CSPs) have built hundreds of Web2 applications around the data they store. They charge customers for both storage and application use. Web3 will need similar apps that can coexist and even bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 spaces, which will take time. These applications and services can come from the open-source community or from for-profit independent software vendors. The benefit comes in because Web2 CSPs require customers to use their apps or pay a premium. Web3 will offer more choices at a lower cost. The explosive growth of generated data and the increased value of data from AI is likely to drive the demand for secure storage methods, such as Web3 data storage.

Enabling Data Democratization at Scale

Beyond decreased cost and more control, Web3 storage also offers an innovative approach to publicly accessible information. A Web3 customer can store critical archive data in a network that is not beholden to one of the major cloud vendors for data integrity and security. Rather, the community of storage providers upholds the integrity and security of the data. These features are not native to Web2 providers. Meanwhile, a Web3 storage provider must adhere to these requirements to be on the network.

This way, Web3 can enable massive databases, like public records and released private research data, to be independently verified by anyone with a network connection. It boosts the archival of valuable data at costs that the public cloud cannot match, with durability and geographic distribution they also cannot compete with. In a no-risk exploration of how decentralized storage technology can be an asset to the city, Protocol Labs’ Filecoin is using Web3 to store and maintain publicly available New York City data on demographics, air quality, legal notices, etc.

Increasing Data Integrity Amid Declining Trust

Increasing data democratization also boosts data integrity. Misinformation is a pervasive and insidious threat, especially with the rise of AI-generated images and vocal recreations that are indistinguishable from their original sources. Web3 offers accessibility and low costs for the world’s largest public data sets. Archives that simply could not be hosted on a public cloud without incurring a great expense, like university research data sets, can now be made publicly available at a low cost to organizations.

Imagine researchers from institutions around the world being able to efficiently share data to advance work on pressing fronts, such as disease research or climate analysis. Web3 data storage could remove the gatekeepers of data access. In Web3, documents are stored in immutable, persistent, and globally accessible archives that can’t be tampered with or altered. Today, Starling Lab leverages IPFS/Web3 to preserve the vast data sets documenting crucial knowledge sources from the past (such as massive data sets of information related to wars), helping to raise awareness for future generations.

In the Web2 world, organizations use public clouds and other forms of centralized storage to save data. Centralized players continue to consolidate the market, which can limit pricing options and data efficiency. Currently, corporations with a positive image can deliver messages that are trusted simply based on the organization’s reputation. The public often accepts these companies’ findings as is, since large industry reports are hard to verify. When Web3 technologies are more available and accepted, the public will be able to access the actual data companies are discussing, enabling the public to be more judicious consumers of corporate information. It will also give more businesses the opportunity to participate in the data economy.

There is a business and social need for Web3 to mature, with more time and work needed before it can be a viable mainstream alternative. When it does become widely available, decentralized storage networks will offer organizations and consumers numerous benefits including a unique level of transparency, efficiency, verifiable trust, and equal access to data – all at what is likely to be a competitive cost.

The post Web3 Will Usher a New Era of Data Democratization and Information Sharing appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Lessons from Home Storage Innovations for Enterprise Solutions

Look at any graph showing the growth in data generated, consumed, copied, and stored, which resembles a steep climb. Organizations and IT consider strategies for best managing this as data projects to grow to 180 zettabytes by 2025, up from 64.2 ZB in 2020. And all this while government agencies, communities, and users demand more sustainable solutions and practices in the data center.

Most organizations – perhaps as many as 90 percent – still run their data centers with processors built on the x86 architecture, including solutions like Dell PowerMax, NetApp AFF, Pure Storage FlashArray, and IBM FlashSystem. However, with data centers amounting to about 1.5 percent of global electricity use, the C-Suite and boards are feeling the pressure from community sentiment and government regulations. There’s a growing call to IT professionals for a more sustainable option.

That push will grow more insistent as we adopt new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that training AI models can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent – nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car, including those emitted by the car’s manufacturer. Considering AI’s need for highly intense processing of massive amounts of data, it should be no surprise that the explosion of AI is increasing the urgency to become more energy efficient throughout the data center.

Organizations must explore all the possibilities for a more efficient data center to appease their boards and follow through on carbon-zero commitments. These options include alternate sources of compute technology, such as Arm-based processors, to power intelligent storage components and arrays.

What can home storage teach us?

Looking at consumer storage, we find some clues for how to become more sustainable. No one wants a big, loud server taking up significant space in their homes, nor do they want their data storage to add significantly to their energy bills. To stay competitive, makers of home network attached storage (NAS) systems, which have been around for about 20 years, build them to accommodate these consumer wishes. That means giving them superior storage capacity in small footprints, low thermal management requirements, and minimal power consumption. They are also easy to manage, capable of being brought up and run by nontechnical people in just a few clicks. Most of these systems –built with Arm cores – run on Marvell, Annapurna Labs, and Realtek CPUs. Consumers benefit from this storage because of improved TCO over x86 alternatives.

In the enterprise, space is precious. Every additional rack unit means additional investment beyond just the hardware – additional floor space, higher energy consumption, cooling, networking, and management overhead. Modern Arm-based processors in the enterprise offer more consistency, better TCO, and a smoother management experience.

Evaluating Arm for Integration

Exploring central processing units (CPUs) with Arm-based processors as an alternative to the much more common x86 processors is a promising solution to the sustainability challenge. However, a few service providers are innovating with CPUs with Arm cores in the data center; though it is climbing, we can see that the market share is in the single digits.

Companies that have introduced Arm include:

• Amazon Graviton Processor
• Ampere Altra offers an astounding 128 cores.
• Google Cloud’s Tau T2A Compute Engine virtual machine.
• Huawei’s Kunpeng, in the company’s cloud business.
• Marvell’s ThunderX2, which supports up to 4TB DDR4 memory.

How Arm cores can increase data center sustainability

Contributing to the data challenge is the world’s colossal boom in data – including from IoT devices at the edge – and new, AI-enabled analytics tools that make finding insights in that data easier. Organizations also face government regulations that dictate how long they must keep data. As a result, organizations keep practically all their data just in case they find a need for it later. Unfortunately, that strains data centers and maxes out energy capacity.

A promising approach is to use Arm to run data storage. Some built-in features of the x86 processor – like built-in instruction sets and support for hardware-accelerated operations – explain why it’s usually the top choice for intensive data processing and management tasks required for enterprise storage. However, Arm’s innovative system architecture promises significant benefits.

When exploring more sustainable enterprise storage, look for the following:

• Intelligent compute engines embedded into components.
• Hardware compression and encryption to offload the CPU.
• Better IO/Watt performance to improve power budget efficiency.

The trend to distribute embedded processing throughout more of the data center architecture will likely continue gaining momentum as the need for more compute continues to grow, but in parallel, remains challenged by the need to improve sustainability. Thinking about it now can put you ahead of the game.

The post Unlocking the Secrets of Sustainability appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise technology. In this feature,

EY Americas Partner Faisal Alam offers commentary on why effective data governance starts with people, processes, and technology.

Although it has almost become cliché to talk about it, digital transformation is a very real thing. But what has changed recently is that the equivalent of gasoline has been poured on the “bonfire” of digital transformation with everything around artificial intelligence (AI).

ChatGPT has been “all the rage” since late 2022, with no sign of slowing down. We’re inundated with news reports of AI’s latest achievements on a regular basis, such as an AI system succeeding in a one in 100,000 chance to diagnose an obscure disease while human medical students come up short. AI is a mechanism to digitally transform organizations and the world itself, including healthcare, education, government, financial services, and daily living.

Leveraging technology on the cutting edge – yes, even the bleeding edge – is on the forefront of technology leaders’ minds, as it should be. Increasingly, the strategy that many of them are considering for digital transformation is to distance their organizations from the infrastructure that supports it (whether imbued with AI capabilities or not).

This trend among CTOs, CIOs and CISO’s begs the question: what role does data center infrastructure play going forward?

Sure, no one cares about infrastructure. I hear the arguments, and I get it. There is a rationale to justify this move away from thinking about infrastructure. Ferrari owners buy their cars for the marque’s history, the passion, the sensations…the sound…the design language. They don’t buy them because of the spark plugs.

Yet, it can be argued that they should care about the spark plugs because if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t even be able to drive the car in the first place. Without spark plugs, a Ferrari is gloriously beautiful but more or less a leather and steel garage ornament. There is value in the spark plugs. There is enablement that allows you to do what you actually want to do. This analogy extends logically to IT infrastructure.

Guess what? CTOs, CIOs, CISOs and other decision-makers responsible for technology in enterprises should care about infrastructure. But why? I am going to make a case in this article for why it’s important to pay attention to infrastructure, even in this age of digital transformation and the prominent emergence of AI. The main reason should be obvious but has been lost in the noise lately.

Get ready, here it is: when you optimize your infrastructure, you free up resources – specifically, money for capital expenditures – to do those leading-edge projects that you want and need to do. Let this thought sink in. I am giving you a workable, pragmatic strategy for information technology management. It inherently changes the outlook on infrastructure.

Let’s say that you want to implement a new innovation project that will take advantage of a hybrid cloud approach. How do you fund it? One of things you can do is storage consolidation. You can go from using 12 storage arrays from another storage vendor (or multiple vendors) to using only 2 storage arrays and save a substantial of money that can be used to fund the really cool innovation project that will drive your organization’s business forward.

By allocating the appropriate amount of attention to what may seem like the “mundane,” you fund exciting projects. Consolidating your enterprise storage with storage solutions built for consolidation and reduction of CAPEX and OPEX, such as Infinidat’s enterprise storage solutions, is not rocket science. But storage consolidating can make your innovation initiatives take off like…a Ferrari. Clearly, I have an obsession with Ferraris.

How would you like millions of dollars to be freed up? What is your wildest dream when it comes to digital transformation? How will you pay for it?

You are responsible for ambidextrous management. You need to innovate but you need to stay within budget and keep the lights on. You need to do these two competing things in a way that allows you to be successful as a technology decision-maker. You also need to do it in such a way that will protect and propel your business into the future.

No one willingly chooses to pay attention to the “mundane” infrastructure “stuff,” but you need to fund innovation. It keeps coming back to that fact. This is why this simple, yet profound strategy I am recommending for you is so integral to achieving what may sometimes seem like “the impossible.”

You can do so much to automate enterprise storage, as well as consolidate storage. You can reduce overhead and make it much easier to manage storage, allowing the system to manage itself. You can shift to a “set-it-and-forget-it mentality” after you extract the value from the storage infrastructure – leveraging the mundane – to free up resources for your other projects. Unlock the hidden value of storage.

Innovation will continue to evolve. Innovation is leveraging AI to completely transform how your business runs <Fill in the blank>. Let the countdown begin to free up capital through optimization of your storage infrastructure.

The post You Think Infrastructure Doesn’t Matter? Well, Think Again appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Although it has almost become cliché to talk about it, digital transformation is a very real thing. But what has changed recently is that the equivalent of gasoline has been poured on the “bonfire” of digital transformation with everything around artificial intelligence (AI).

ChatGPT has been “all the rage” since late 2022, with no sign of slowing down. We’re inundated with news reports of AI’s latest achievements on a regular basis, such as an AI system succeeding in a one in 100,000 chance to diagnose an obscure disease while human medical students come up short. AI is a mechanism to digitally transform organizations and the world itself, including healthcare, education, government, financial services, and daily living.

Leveraging technology on the cutting edge – yes, even the bleeding edge – is on the forefront of technology leaders’ minds, as it should be. Increasingly, the strategy that many of them are considering for digital transformation is to distance their organizations from the infrastructure that supports it (whether imbued with AI capabilities or not).

This trend among CTOs, CIOs and CISO’s begs the question: what role does data center infrastructure play going forward?

Sure, no one cares about infrastructure. I hear the arguments, and I get it. There is a rationale to justify this move away from thinking about infrastructure. Ferrari owners buy their cars for the marque’s history, the passion, the sensations…the sound…the design language. They don’t buy them because of the spark plugs.

Yet, it can be argued that they should care about the spark plugs because if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t even be able to drive the car in the first place. Without spark plugs, a Ferrari is gloriously beautiful but more or less a leather and steel garage ornament. There is value in the spark plugs. There is enablement that allows you to do what you actually want to do. This analogy extends logically to IT infrastructure.

Guess what? CTOs, CIOs, CISOs and other decision-makers responsible for technology in enterprises should care about infrastructure. But why? I am going to make a case in this article for why it’s important to pay attention to infrastructure, even in this age of digital transformation and the prominent emergence of AI. The main reason should be obvious but has been lost in the noise lately.

Get ready, here it is: when you optimize your infrastructure, you free up resources – specifically, money for capital expenditures – to do those leading-edge projects that you want and need to do. Let this thought sink in. I am giving you a workable, pragmatic strategy for information technology management. It inherently changes the outlook on infrastructure.

Let’s say that you want to implement a new innovation project that will take advantage of a hybrid cloud approach. How do you fund it? One of things you can do is storage consolidation. You can go from using 12 storage arrays from another storage vendor (or multiple vendors) to using only 2 storage arrays and save a substantial of money that can be used to fund the really cool innovation project that will drive your organization’s business forward.

By allocating the appropriate amount of attention to what may seem like the “mundane,” you fund exciting projects. Consolidating your enterprise storage with storage solutions built for consolidation and reduction of CAPEX and OPEX, such as Infinidat’s enterprise storage solutions, is not rocket science. But storage consolidating can make your innovation initiatives take off like…a Ferrari. Clearly, I have an obsession with Ferraris.

How would you like millions of dollars to be freed up? What is your wildest dream when it comes to digital transformation? How will you pay for it?

You are responsible for ambidextrous management. You need to innovate but you need to stay within budget and keep the lights on. You need to do these two competing things in a way that allows you to be successful as a technology decision-maker. You also need to do it in such a way that will protect and propel your business into the future.

No one willingly chooses to pay attention to the “mundane” infrastructure “stuff,” but you need to fund innovation. It keeps coming back to that fact. This is why this simple, yet profound strategy I am recommending for you is so integral to achieving what may sometimes seem like “the impossible.”

You can do so much to automate enterprise storage, as well as consolidate storage. You can reduce overhead and make it much easier to manage storage, allowing the system to manage itself. You can shift to a “set-it-and-forget-it mentality” after you extract the value from the storage infrastructure – leveraging the mundane – to free up resources for your other projects. Unlock the hidden value of storage.

Innovation will continue to evolve. Innovation is leveraging AI to completely transform how your business runs <Fill in the blank>. Let the countdown begin to free up capital through optimization of your storage infrastructure.

The post You Think Infrastructure Doesn’t Matter? Well, Think Again appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise technology. In this feature, Qumulo CTO Kiran Bhageshpur offers commentary on why to bet on software when evaluating enterprise data storage solutions.

Storage is changing.

For years, the storage market had a reputation for being boring. Not today! The storage world is changing in ways that were unimaginable 10 years ago. But if you want to see what’s changing, don’t look to the legacy vendors (NetApp or Dell/EMC). They’re not leading the charge, and that should surprise no one.

A clue to why big changes never come from market leaders can be found in Clayton Christensen’s seminal tome: “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” Christensen posits that the real threat to established market leaders comes in quirky new approaches that don’t measure up to market-leaders (i.e., they are lower performance, more expensive, etc.).

These approaches are small emerging segments that don’t initially interest the market leaders. Disruptive start-ups employ innovative new approaches to attack these new markets. At first, these new approaches fall short of legacy vendor’s products — they lower performance, cost more, are slower, etc.

Software & Data Storage

Over time, these approaches find their footing, innovate, and eventually meet and wildly beat marketing-leading products because of their superior technological foundations. Here are some well-known examples:

• Digital photography: Digital photographs were horrible at first. They were expensive; printing was a pain, and lenses were laughable. But eventually, digital images became amazing! The quality surpassed traditional photography. At the same time, the world moved away from printing towards online viewing. And just like that, Kodak was dead.
• SaaS: At first, Software-as-a-Service had an awful user experience, poor reliability, and shallow functionality. But then, the world reached “peak PC,” the internet became pervasive and always on, and SaaS killed licensed software.
• Streaming entertainment: The first streaming entertainment was poor quality, bulky, slow, expensive, and had sparse selection of content. Cable companies were not impressed. But overnight, we saw 4K content emerge, lower costs, and explosion of quality content (Ted Lasso, Game of Thrones, etc.). Were cable companies finally impressed? Hard to say – most are dying now!

So, Where are The Next-Gen Storage Challengers?

Christensen promises we’re ripe for an onslaught of challengers who will address the needs our legacy vendors have ignored (Example: Cloud). But where are they?

It turns out Christensen’s story is just half the story. Marc Andreesen revealed the rest of the story. In a now-famous blog from 2011 (“Why Software Is Eating the World”), Andreesen makes the case that technology’s future was in software, not hardware. Examples include:

• Amazon ate Borders by replacing bricks and mortar with software.
• Netflix replaced cable in the ground with software.
• iPhone killed Blackberry with – you guessed it – software.

Andreesen’s message is simple: Software is where true differentiation lies. Why? Because innovating hardware is brutally difficult! It is too expensive (and slow) to change hardware.

The only companies that can succeed at hardware innovation are those that play at massive scale – usually at the consumer level. Look at how Samsung and Apple have bent the price/performance curve for SSD storage due to the massive scale at which they manufacture phones. There are enormous, fixed costs to hardware, but at massive scale, you can outrun those costs. This is virtually impossible in B2B markets.

Plus, even if you’re lucky enough to win round one (i.e., introduce a hardware innovation that beats the legacy guys), you’ll never keep that lead. If the market zigs and you zag, you’re done.

These issues disappear with software. Especially in a CI/CD world, the pace of software innovation is lightning-fast, and fixed costs are trivial.

A Graveyard of Storage Challengers

The opportunity for next-gen storage challengers is ripe! The legacy vendors (Dell/EMC and NetApp) are stuck in the on-premises world. They build hardware-optimized storage appliances focused on-premises storage performance.

That makes sense – that’s classic legacy stuff. Unfortunately, there’s been a 15-year stretch of disasters as next-gen challengers missed Andreesen’s message (innovate in software, not hardware).

• In 2010/2011, Violin identified the need for faster, cheaper storage. Flash was expensive and the company tried to address this with hardware (their flash fabric architecture). They raised $185 million in funding and went public in 2013. But then Flash memory prices dropped and the company went bankrupt in 2016.
• BlueArc shared a similar fate. Intel X86 servers were slow and BlueArc build a high-performance NAS that placed the file system in an ASIC. The hardware improved to the lint that BlueArc lost its advantage. Hitachi Data System bought BlueArc, saving the company from bankruptcy.

With these (and other) high-profile catastrophic failures, one would assume that the latest generation of storage platform challengers would have learned and eschewed the strategy of trying to innovate in hardware.

Not so much! If you look at Pure and VAST, both are optimizing hardware to address market needs the legacy guys aren’t serving (mostly around high-performance storage). Pure wrapped its sheet metal around NAND flash, while VAST leverages QLC Flash storage.

But, hardware? Really? This is precisely where Andreesen is correct. Software will eat the storage market, not more hardware!

What will they do when flash gets faster due to massive consumer trends? Or if QLC doesn’t drop in price quickly enough? Both Pure and VAST will be stuck trying to catch up with massively expensive – and slow – hardware innovation.

Good luck! They won’t be able to maintain a long-term advantage with a hardware strategy.

What’s an Enterprise Storage Manager to Do? Here is what I tell my customers:

• Don’t worry too much about short-term costs – simply enjoy the ride down the pricing curve driven by massive consumer companies.
• Whatever you do, don’t chase short-term price advantages delivered by the hardware optimizers – the lessons of the past decades show those advantages will be short-lived, and you’ll be looking for a new storage vendor.
• Do take a page out of Andreesen’s book and look for a storage partner innovating with software and leveraging commodity widely available infrastructure hardware. You’ll see vastly quicker improvements from a vendor who is there for the long-run.

In other words – bet on software!

The post Bet on Software When Evaluating Enterprise Data Storage appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise technology. In this feature, Pure Storage‘s Taruna Gandhi offers three best practices for developing a leading STaaS offering right now.

We have entered the as-a-Service era, in which individual and organizational purchasing decisions are increasingly characterized by a consumption-based model instead of a large upfront purchase. Within the enterprise, today’s economic climate of uncertainty has further contributed to the rise of as-a-service models. From the storage vendor perspective, the value of STaaS (Storage as-a-Service) is clear, but understanding how to successfully STaaS-ify an offering requires a hardhat. Why? Because developing a solid STaaS offering is a lot like building a house: you need the perfect combination of a solid foundation, sound architecture, and an understanding of the future homeowner.

STaaS

The Foundation

The first step in developing a leading STaaS offering is to ensure that you start with a strong foundation built on transparency, choice and flexibility. Outline the outcomes that your customer will be purchasing – this includes the workload type, workload performance and profile, consumption capacity, uptime or availability, energy consumption and subscription term. The basis of your offering should focus on selling outcomes, rather than simply advertising the technical specs of the product. This simple shift in focus will help build trust with your customers, especially as they look for products that best align with their ideal data strategy and productivity.

The value STaaS holds goes beyond just ensuring customers only pay for what they consume. Rather, it offers the promise of continuously evolving to remain a custom-fit for customers’ changing needs. Because customers want to be able to both anticipate and measure the ROI that a purchase will bring them, it’s also important to allow your customer to measure and track their consumption – doing so transparently will build trust. Furthermore, it’s beneficial to highlight your commitment to fulfilling promised outcomes with clear expectations. As a best practice, you should be prepared to provide service credits and remediation if there is an issue – even if it’s on your own dime.

The Architecture

The next step is to plan the architecture, or method of delivery, for your STaaS offering. Your team’s goal is to optimize technology costs for yourself and your client. Consider whether your client needs a single-tenant or multi-tenant architecture model. Multi-tenant models allow you to share resources between customers, while single-tenant models run distinct software for each customer. Multi-tenant models are more cost-effective and easier to maintain but allow for less customization. Single-tenant models are customized to an individual customer’s needs, with abundant resources available anytime within that dedicated environment. This runs up costs, and single-tenant models require regular maintenance for each client in accordance with different setups. There are benefits and drawbacks to each architecture model, but that decision is up to your customer based on their needs. In either case, implement a cost monitoring feature into your STaaS architecture across products to easily and transparently scale your customer’s user base.

Additionally, implementing data security as you design your offering can’t be an afterthought. Look at whether a zero trust or a traditional role-based access control model is most effective for your STaaS architecture. The former requires authentication for all users, and the latter designates different roles and levels of security access in an organization. Either way, invest in cybersecurity to prevent data breaches and plan for limiting the impact of data breaches and addressing them in a timely manner in case they occur. Much like investing in seismic architecture for a building, designing your STaaS architecture with data security in mind limits the impact of security breaches when or if they occur.

The Occupants

The last step in developing a leading STaaS solution involves understanding the needs of your client. Keep the customer in mind, and be fair in your approach. By considering the customer throughout the STaaS-ification process, you will improve their experience and success, and bolster their trust in you as a vendor. Additionally, don’t discount the value of collecting feedback from customers. This will further help you to develop customizable offerings on an individual client basis.

A Solid Build

Leveraging an efficient architecture will ensure that you deliver a leading STaaS solution. By carefully and proactively designing your product with these tips in mind, you can proactively address the drawbacks clients see from typical STaaS vendors – such as limited control, limited customization, slower speed and security risks. Instead, your customers will reap the benefits of STaaS (such as vendor-managed infrastructure SLAs, no risk of over or under provisioning, reduced risk of data loss, operational agility and efficiency to save time and costs), and will be one step ahead of the typical setbacks their peers and competitors face from vendors who don’t approach the STaaS design process with consideration and proactivity.

To truly lead as a STaaS vendor, focus on aligning IT strategy with financial and business strategies. By fostering collaboration between leadership and IT teams, you will build a scalable STaaS solution that benefits your customer’s long-term growth as well as your own. A strong foundation, sound architecture, and an implicit understanding of client needs will set apart your STaaS offering.

The post Three Best Practices for Developing a Leading STaaS Offering appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise technology. In this feature, Apricorn US Managing Director Kurt Markley offers commentary on how to embrace the basics of secure storage and backup.

With the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape, it’s easy for organizations to get caught up in the hype of new products and tools. After all, cybersecurity is, according to Gartner, a $172 billion business (2022). Despite the fear, uncertainty, and doubt prompting organizations to over-buy, it’s important not to overlook the basics of cybersecurity, especially when it comes to protecting your data.

With the ongoing scourge that is ransomware continuing to wreak havoc across enterprise landscapes, one of the most critical aspects of cybersecurity for these businesses is backup and recovery. Having a solid backup strategy in place can help minimize the damage caused by a cyber-attack or natural disaster. But where should you store your backups? The answer is simple: in a variety of places, including the cloud and encrypted external hardware storage devices.

Secure Storage &Backup

Encryption Should be Mandated

It should go without saying that encryption is a critical aspect of protecting your data. By encrypting all of your backups, you can ensure that even if your storage devices fall into the wrong hands, the data cannot be accessed without the decryption key.

Encryption is a generally accepted best practice for storing data. According to the Apricorn 2022 IT Security Survey, 82 percent of respondents said that encryption should be required to secure USB storage devices. The issue is that not every best practice is being followed. In that same survey, only 34 percent say that encryption is mandated within their organizations to protect data on the move.

When considering backup and storage strategies, enterprises have to simply keep encryption on the table. It is one of the best ways to ensure only the right people have access to your critical data and is a simple practice – that works – to put in place.

As Simple as 3-2-1

The 3-2-1 rule is a well-established best practice for backup and recovery. It involves keeping three copies of your data on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site. While cloud-based storage is useful, easy and important, your data should never be stored in the cloud alone. We saw what happened in 2021 when the OVHcloud SBG2 data center in Strasbourg, France burned down. Not only did the fire destroy servers storing data for hundreds of organizations, but, because the company stored backup servers in the same building, customers lost all their data. In fact, in March 2023 OVHcloud was ordered to compensate two customers because it was unable to fulfill its promise to provide backups should the original data be lost.

As noted, one of the biggest threats to enterprise data is ransomware. In fact, according to the same Apricorn survey, most respondents (93 percent) say they have a ransomware readiness plan, but significant knowledge gaps exist regarding adequate backup and cyber resilience practices. Only one in three back up to both the cloud and encrypted hardware storage devices, even though 82 percent want their organizations to require encrypted hardware USB usage. Additionally, only 20 percent back up in real-time, and only 18 percent employ the long-established best practice for backup: the 3-2-1 method.

Choosing the Right Backup Mediums

There’s no question that the convenience and scalability of the cloud make it a popular choice for storing enterprise data. That’s not going to go away. But to support the cloud and ensure enterprises are embracing the 3-2-1 rule, encrypted external hardware storage devices, like USBs or hard drives, are a critical component of a complete backup and recovery strategy. They offer a secure, portable, and convenient way to store your backups off-site, ensuring that your data is protected even if your primary storage is compromised.

However, it’s important to note that not all encrypted external hardware storage devices are created equal. When selecting a device, look for one that offers strong encryption, such as AES-256, and has been independently certified by organizations like FIPS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), or Common Criteria.

Practicing Proper Data Hygiene

Data hygiene is no one’s favorite thing to do and might be tedious work, but it’s far less dreary than trying to recover from a successful ransomware attack. Proper data hygiene encompasses performing regular data management audits to identify vulnerabilities, safeguarding practices, and attack vectors. By understanding where the gaps in your data protection strategy exist, you can better build plans to restore operations after an incident.

For example, consider performing regular backups of your data to ensure that all your information is secure. In addition, establish proper data retention policies to determine how long to keep data, what data to retain, and how to securely dispose of data that is no longer needed.

Another important step in data hygiene is to establish strong password policies. This includes requiring users to create strong passwords that are difficult to guess, and to change their passwords regularly. Multi-factor authentication can also be implemented to further protect your data.

At the end of the day, while there may be many flashy cybersecurity products and tools out there, the basics are still around for a reason: they work. A solid backup and recovery strategy that embraces a 3-2-1 strategy, ensures encryption of data and gives credence to data hygiene can help minimize the damage caused by a cyber-attack or natural disaster. Don’t wait until it’s too late – invest in the basics now to protect your enterprise’s data in the future.

The post How to Embrace the Basics of a Secure Storage and Backup appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise technology. In this feature, Element Critical CEO Ken Parent offers advice for how to find the right data center partner for your industry.

The demand for data center network services has risen significantly due to an increased need for businesses and public institutions worldwide that heavily depend on digital infrastructures. One estimate valued the global data center transformation market size at USD 7.8 billion in 2021 and forecast it expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5 percent from 2022 to 2030. This surge in demand is a result of various enterprises operating in multiple industries requiring reliable data center services.

Before we start, it’s important to take a peek back at how global data center transformation has, well, transformed, over the years. In the mid 2010’s, digital transformation became a catch-all term for any sort of technology modernization project that was able to take place thanks in large part to cloud computing. This included applications that previously could only be on-premises applications or were cumbersome capital investments, such as data and analytics stacks and digital commerce. To boot, some of these were also nearly obsolete when the installation was completed.

Cloud computing opened a door for these services to be installed in days, weeks, or months instead of years. However, these organizations also needed to transform how they consumed IT in order to take advantage of those benefits. Fast-forward to today and virtually any type of application can also be consumed in the cloud. However, there are some industries that are more heavily regulated than others (e.g., healthcare, legal, finance, etc.), so it’s important that organizations work with data center providers who know about their specific industry and its requirements, and who can provide the customizable IT architecture to keep data secure. At a minimum, the provider should give guidance in future-proofing their IT infrastructure transformations to prevent them from becoming obsolete.

So, what else should IT leaders consider when evaluating a data center partner to support the digital transformation of their company?

Take Stock of Your Requirements

Finding the right data center to support an enterprise’s digital transformation requires that IT leaders think through what their digital transformation goals are. Those goals can be complex or as simple as migrating workloads or cloud storage. Colocation providers should tout their abilities regarding high-speed connectivity, interconnectivity, power and data center redundancy, physical security, and high levels of uptime.

After minimum requirements and basic functionality are established, ensure that the provider is also knowledgeable about any technology mandates related to your specific industry.

For instance, in the legal industry, e-discovery is a set of technologies that automate the parsing of digital documents during the discovery phase leading up to a trial. Legal technologies have been proven to save legal teams up to 23 percent of time, but without the right data center partner, those savings can easily be nullified.

Representing a landscape shift in healthcare, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched the Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) in 2020, aiming to move away from siloed and brittle public health data systems to connected, resilient, adaptable, and sustainable ‘response-ready’ systems within the healthcare industry.

The pandemic created an urgent need for digital transformation for educators. IT leaders quickly learned that having reliable, scalable, and secure platforms through a single platform can be a game changer, saving time and money while pushing transformation forward to the benefit of students and educators.

As you can see, even if an industry doesn’t have a stringent set of technology policies, it’s still important to look for a provider that understands – and can deliver – what you need.

Building for Success for Today and Tomorrow

Data centers give IT leaders the ability to scale workloads quickly and efficiently. The right colocation provider should be discussing with you how scalable their systems are, whether that means the ability to ramp up more servers rapidly during a high-traffic event and ensuring the network can continue delivering the traffic as rapidly as possible or accommodating company growth or rapidly increasing high-density compute needs.

The right provider should also be readily available to assist with the colocation service, from onboarding to support. While an enterprise may already have all their boxes checked before beginning the process, it never hurts if a provider can also advise IT leaders on matters such as disaster recovery/business recovery, network operations center (NOC) management, or monitoring, as just a few examples.

The Importance of Interconnectivity

Data centers are connectivity hubs. They offer access to multiple service providers and internet exchanges. IT leaders need to decide what interconnectivity they need to have with customers, partners, and other data centers when choosing a colocation provider.

Colocating infrastructure allows IT leaders to connect directly to other cloud service providers and critical IT services. That gives them the ability to create hybrid cloud environments that facilitate data transfers between various systems and applications at the fastest data transfer rates possible.

Failing to architect connectivity needs properly can have several consequences, ranging from frustrated users to expensive, custom-built workarounds to be able to achieve interconnectivity needs. For instance, a school district that serves both urban and rural communities will require interconnectivity between modern internet service providers (ISPs) in the city as well as the

ones serving its rural population. That could turn into a costly side-step after considering maintenance and upgrades, for instance.

The Right Partner for Your Digital Transformation

The meteoric rise of AI and its myriad business implications in just the last six months is now also accelerating the need for businesses to carefully think through digital transformations. Digital transformations are exactly that – transformations. There’s a starting point, but there’s rarely an endpoint and the rate of velocity of the transformation changes from enterprise to enterprise, and industry to industry.

It is vital to work with a flexible provider, particularly when structuring contracts designed to cover evolving requirements for colocation and hybrid infrastructures. That’s why it’s imperative for IT leaders to find the right data center partner that can help them transform as rapidly – or slowly – as they need to so they can begin transforming tomorrow or over years, at the pace their business demands.

The post How to Find the Right Data Center Partner for Your Industry appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise business software. In this feature, Veritas Technologies‘ Rags Srinivasan offers takeaways from Gen Z’s security data storage perception gap.

IT leaders spend all day, every day thinking about their organizations’ cloud-based data, from how to save on storage to protecting themselves against ransomware. In contrast, most consumers don’t think twice about data storage and maintenance. Even Generation Z consumers, a younger, digitally native demographic, aren’t much better. Many of them hold on to unused online accounts and associated data without thinking about the data protection risks, environmental impact and financial costs of digital storage.

Earlier this year, a survey* of more than 13,000 consumers examined some of their digital data habits and what they know about the environmental implications of data storage. Here are three key takeaways from the data and how IT leaders and consumers can make data protection and sustainability a priority.

Data Storage Perception Gap

As Data Storage Grows Exponentially, so do the Environmental Impact & Security Risks

The size of real-time data in the global datasphere is expected to expand tenfold—from five zettabytes to 51 zettabytes—between 2018 and 2025. Most of this is enterprise data. And when an average of 50 percent of a company’s data is redundant, obsolete or trivial, and another 35 percent is dark, meaning it has unknown value, the potential repercussions of storing this vast quantity of data outweighs the benefits.

Beyond the financial cost of storage, data has a large impact on an organization’s carbon footprint. More data means more energy used for data storage, leading to more CO2 emissions. More data and online customer accounts also mean a larger digital footprint, which opens companies and individuals up to increased cybersecurity and data compliance risks. There is an even greater risk when it comes to unused accounts, which consumers have plenty of—60 percent of Gen Z respondents have online accounts they no longer use. Of those, four-fifths (80 percent) report having entertainment and shopping accounts they no longer use and nearly three-fourths (71 percent) report having an online bank account they no longer use. If an individual ignores inactive accounts that hold financial or other sensitive information and their passwords are compromised, they could experience a data breach and not even know it.

Gen Z Doesn’t Realize the Part They Play in Data Storage Pollution

While the environmental impact of broader enterprise data management is under constant scrutiny, the survey found that Gen Z consumers are not aware of how their own digital habits tie into that and can negatively impact the environment. In fact, 51 percent of Gen Z consumers failed to recognize that the electronic versions of their account-related statements and other unnecessarily stored digital information have a negative environmental impact.

For the average consumer, it’s easy to forget that data centers are mostly fossil fuel-powered and generate about the same amount of CO2 as the airline industry. Most sustainability efforts focus on broad stroke concepts of energy reduction or opting for more sustainable materials to reduce carbon footprints, so it’s not surprising that many consumers are unaware of the environmental implications of data storage associated with their own online accounts. Organizations should plan accordingly for this knowledge gap and implement deduplication strategies for customer data to efficiently minimize redundant data stored in the cloud.

Where Does the Responsibility Lie? Educate Customers to Align Expectations & Relay Best Practices

Nearly half (44 percent) of Gen Z respondents said it’s wrong for businesses to waste energy and cause pollution by storing unneeded information online. But keeping in mind consumers’ propensity for keeping unused online accounts, the responsibility lies with both consumers to delete their inactive accounts and unneeded information, and organizations to wipe any redundant, obsolete or trivial consumer data from their data storage and backups.

Storing unnecessary data in the cloud increases the carbon footprints and data protection risks for organizations and individuals, so it’s important that everyone is aware of the part they play in the creation and reduction of unoptimized data in the cloud. To do this, organizations should arm their customers with the facts and outline personal data management best practices in plain terms. Using infographics and visuals can make this information easier to understand for those with limited technical background and knowledge. Organizations should also send reminders to users who have not been active in over a year to close any unused accounts and delete any obsolete data, noting the positive data protection and environmental impacts this can have.

Now is the Time to Address Data Management Strategies

Consumers will continue to closely scrutinize the sustainability practices of organizations, and as time progresses, become increasingly aware of data protection and security risks. If an organization has not prioritized techniques to reduce unnecessary storage in the cloud and relayed the importance of this issue to consumers, now is the time to start. With the countless benefits of streamlining data storage, including reduced cost, better environmental outcomes and increased preparedness for ransomware attacks, the entire business will gain from an overhaul of poor data management practices.

*The study of 13,000 consumers was conducted by 3Gem on behalf of Veritas Technologies across Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, the UK and the US from February 1-16, 2023.

The post 3 Takeaways from Gen Z’s Security & Sustainability Data Storage Perception Gap appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise business software. In this feature, Blue Orange Digital CEO Josh Miramant offers commentary on what hybrid cloud storage strategies mean for data transformation.

Everybody’s jumping ship right now — or, more correctly, jumping from cloud-only strategies to hybrid strategies. This migration came to light when the Cloud Industry Forum conducted a survey and discovered the desire for seamless solutions, regardless of the type of data transformation and storage, drives 60 percent of businesses toward a hybrid cloud ecosystem (as opposed to a cloud-only strategy).

Hybrid Cloud Benefits: Evergreen Flexibility and Staying Up to Date

The competition of the public clouds has been fierce, and on-premises technologies have noticed and are reemerging as a value add in conjunction with the public feature set. A hybrid cloud, which can include on-premises and public platforms, can provide reduced costs, greater agility, security, compliance, and deployment flexibility while getting the most out of existing infrastructure investments.

The rising cost of cloud and advances in cloud hybrid technologies has led many companies to choose a hybrid solution. Mordor Intelligence performed a 10-year forecast ending in 2028, and it estimated that the hybrid cloud market will grow by a compound annual growth rate of almost 22 percent. Additionally, according to Cisco’s “2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report,” 82 percent of IT leaders are shifting to hybrid cloud environments.

The studies detail the public cloud struggles to merge with new technologies that are often required for a strong enterprise data storage strategy and other business practices. That is not the only concern. Here are some other reasons you might opt for a hybrid solution over selecting a single cloud provider:

• Vendor lock-in
• Higher costs
• More control over sensitive data
• Compliance requirements
• Inflexible physical storage is required for on-premises information
• Improved business continuity

Data virtualization is a solution because it leaves data where it sits in existence. However, there are different methods for replicating it into an ingestion layer. For example, an SQL database sits on-premises. You can virtualize that data and consume it from a cloud product without moving it from that environment. It can reduce some of the efforts of cloud transformation that can occur, helping you avoid a massive migration process while you benefit from the downstream effects of cloud products.

Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategies

The Pros and Cons of Hybrid: Both Sides of the Story

Integrating multiple systems can be a lot of work. But in most cases, when companies choose to stick to a cloud-only ecosystem, it’s more about familiarity and habit than efficiency and productivity. However, as these businesses expand, they tend to see a few red flags — all warning that their current cloud system is not robust enough to meet the company’s growing needs. Signs include uncontrolled cloud costs, the inability to connect with other companies because they have a hybrid system, and growing expenses.

It’s safe to say that traditional cloud-only ecosystems are getting rather long in the tooth. This begs the question: Which hybrid cloud benefits are the biggest magnets drawing companies toward this type of ecosystem?

Pro: Improved ROI

Adding a public cloud provider to your existing on-premises infrastructure allows you to expand your cloud computing capacity without increasing your data center expenses. Hybrid cloud models also open the door to the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, without extending or replacing your existing infrastructure. You can speed up the development and delivery of apps by maximizing resources and increasing productivity.

Pro: Reduced Security Costs and Risk

Hybrid cloud infrastructure is a more cost-effective operation, especially in the field of security. It allows you to store all critical and sensitive data on private servers while keeping applications and less sensitive information on a public cloud. This approach also allows for effective application governance, which lets you decide where your application sits and where hybrid computing happens. As a result, it assists in improving privacy and ensuring compliance for your regulated applications. In short, using a hybrid cloud ecosystem means that you will keep premium control over all your business data as the platform strongly limits exposure to unauthorized individuals.

Pro: Fluid Innovation

A hybrid cloud platform allows your business to optimize IT performance, increase marketing, and, perhaps more critically, foster the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to changing work demands. You can also operate in an environment that makes sense for you. This gives you a natural edge over competitors who prefer cloud-only solutions.

Con: It Takes Planning to Migrate

While hopping from the cloud to a hybrid platform isn’t technically a drawback, it should be mentioned. Why? Because in the beginning, the process will require a level of planning to successfully migrate all the necessary aspects of your business to hybrid cloud storage.

Con: Training and Security Mismanagement

When people come together on a more complex platform, not everyone might have the training to deal with the new ecosystem or have the knowledge to stay on top of any security issues that might arise as the network grows. At best, this could lead to the underutilization of the hybrid cloud’s full potential and, at worst, security breaches and data leaks. Training, choosing the right network protection tool and habits, and fostering a culture of open dialogue will keep everyone on the same page.

How to Effectively Adopt a Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Ready to embrace a hybrid cloud strategy? Here’s what you should know about making the switch.

Utilize Automation & AI

When considering a hybrid cloud strategy, automation is a solution that can help with the transition and data transformation in general. You can automate scale-out and provisioning as well as deployment in private clouds, public clouds, and edge locations. In data observability, for example, automation and AI effectively make migration and abstraction easier by helping identify, tag, and put governorship in place around data.

Migrate in Small Increments

If your data system is very simplistic, doing a full swap in a day is possible. However, it’s generally advised to migrate to a hybrid system via small steps. Focus on securing one aspect of your business on the new network and then make sure it’s functional before moving on to the next. This doesn’t have to be stressful; automation solutions can help with the transition process.

Governance & Observability are Key

You need better monitoring if you have more systems. When you have more pieces where data sits, you need to have that identified and documented in a glossary and dictionary. You need good lineage when there are more transformation components because there are more stages through an ETL.

All of these things become paramount with the complexity of the system in order to receive all the security benefits, including cost savings, vendor lock-in, and control.

At the end of the day, a hybrid cloud represents an incredibly flexible environment. You can add what works for you and create a tailor-made ecosystem that supports your business’s continued security, productivity, and growth. This fluid ability to adapt quickly to new technology, growth, and demand is what sets it apart from the traditional cloud.

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