Application type should determine storage location

As customers re-evaluate their capital IT budgets, yet still need more storage capacity, cloud storage solutions are garnering more interest as users look to on demand storage. ParaScale, The Planet, Nirvanix and Amazon S3, among others, may all have something to offer an IT solution provider's customers.

Geoff Tudor, founder, CEO of cloud storage vendor Nirvanix, says that with more and more applications living in the cloud, more opportunities open up for storing all different data types using cloud storage. But there are still opportunities to develop solutions based on both traditional hardware-based storage, NAS and SAN technologies and the cloud.

Salesforce.com is a prime example, Tudor says. While traditional storage can allow for really fast ways to serve up data, customers are also going to need archiving capabilities and places to store less critical user data generated by the application, he says.

Walters agrees that while any kind of data -- from mission-critical tier one through archive and backup tier three data can be stored -- the cloud’s inherent latency makes it much more compatible and cost effective to store archive data and system backups rather than business critical information.

"It really comes down to how fast do customers need to access the data? The typical disadvantages of latency, fast access and transfer speeds tend to limit the types of data that people will store there," Walters says.

Sajai Krishnan of ParaScale says he believes tier-two data, or data that isn’t mission critical but that will need to be accessed more often than archived records, is making up the bulk of data stored in the cloud.

"As users go about their workday creating data, as files are being placed on virtual servers, corporate videos are recorded along with training content – there’s just no easy way to store it," he says.