Perhaps the first big announcement to come out of EMC World is the twin combination of the new Atmos OnLine service, as well as AT&T's new Synaptic Storage as a Service based on Atmos.
While the new services and capabilities are interesting in their own right, I think they're emblematic of certain trends we'll inevitably see more of in the future.
And that's worth discussing ...
Storage As A Service?
The problem with most storage discussions is that while storage components can certainly be described as a "commodity", most people don't think of their information as a "commodity".
Those of you who have ever experienced a massive data loss or privacy breach can certainly empathize with this perspective.
Any successful storage as a service offering has to meet two criteria; (1) it has to be cheaper or easier than doing it yourself, and (2) it has to offer certain well-defined and pre-agreed standards for performance, availability and security.
Unless you can do #1, you don't have a market.
And unless you are pretty clear about #2, no one will trust you with their information.
The Service Provider Advantage?
Everyone points to Amazon's S3 as the leading example of storage as a service. I'd agree that they do a decent job of #1 above, but as far as #2 -- well, let's just say that not everyone is convinced yet.
Now, consider for a moment the economic advantages that a service provider -- such as AT&T -- brings to the table.
They have plenty of data center space in all sorts of useful locations. Those facilities are already built and already paid for.
They have big pipes -- wired and wireless -- that can deliver information when and where it's needed. Those pipes are largely already built and paid for.
They already have business relationships and trusted provider status with enterprises large and small. Those relationships are already built and paid for.
And they have sophisticated infrastructure and process in place to manage things like service delivery, security, provisioning, billing and so on. Most of that is already in place.
So, when people ask me about newer-style storage cloud providers (Amazon as an example) being viable in the marketplace long term, I just have to point to all the inherent structural advantages favoring the telcos and service providers in this market.
The View From IT
For many years, IT organizations have handed over parts of their operations to providers who could do a better job at a lower price than the do-it-yourself option.
I remember many years ago when telcos and service providers were convincing enterprise IT shops that they could do a better job managing the enterprise backbone than IT could do themselves.
It took a while to make that case, but today it's just accepted as a matter-of-fact that enterprise backbone management is something that you contract for, and not usually something you try and do yourself.
As a result, the enterprise backbone today is usually cost-effective, well managed and secured.
To me, it makes all the sense in the world that many IT organizations would look at part of their information portfolio, and start to think about it more as an extended network service, rather than a pile of disk drives sitting in the data center.
Exactly what information is and is not a candidate for this kind of service will vary by industry, application and other factors -- but I've been in plenty of customer discussions where this sort of service would solve a thorny problem for at least part of the IT landscape.
Put differently -- I think these new services will find willing customers before too long.
What Will The Future Bring?
Most likely, this market will evolve along the lines of other service provider offerings. We'll undoubtedly see more players getting into the act.
And, once there's more than one choice, the inevitable specialization and differentiation will begin.
Some will compete on price. Some will compete on service level. Some will compete on security or compliance. Some will look to value-added services on top of the basic information utility.
The net result in a few years should be dozens and dozens of new choices for putting certain kinds of corporate information in the cloud.
And, if they're all powered by Atmos, it wouldn't upset me too much :-)
Chuck,
I couldn't agree more on your requirements for cloud storage to succeed in the enterprise. As someone who lived through the first wave of managed storage services at StorageNetworks, these two elements were always top of mind. Sadly, it was difficult for us to deliver cheaper/easier storage as a service using the EMC hardware of the time. We did a fine job of developing SLAs and meeting our customer expectations, however!
Looking around this second wave of storage services, I noticed that Nirvanix stood out. It's certainly got the cheaper/easier factor covered versus DIY internal storage. But the company is focused on the enterprise space, with excellent SLAs and metrics, sales, and support. So I took the plunge and went to work for the company myself!
Amazon S3 is a good choice for many use cases. Atmos onLine looks like a nice service, too, and time will show us exactly where it fits in to the overall storage services market once it becomes available in Q3. I certainly expect many, many of AT&T's competitors to join the fray as well over the next year!
We live in exciting times, Chuck, and both of us have put ourselves at the center of it!
Posted by: Stephen Foskett | May 19, 2009 at 05:36 AM
Chuck, couple of the emerging attractive features of clouds are rapid provisioning and bite sized procurements...I could not even find pricing info on your or AT&T's offering...I would argue the "structural advantage" you mention may be too rigid in cloud world
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2009/05/it-is-not-a-cloud-if.html
Posted by: vinnie mirchandani | May 19, 2009 at 05:50 AM
EMC taking Atmos Storage OnLine is surely the first step into the wild new world of Cloud Computing. In advent of the Cloud Computing, the threshold of computing has, for all intents and purposes, been lowered for the prospective entrants. Not too far in the future, we may see the traditional data center we all are accustomed to only in the Smithsonian Institute. Cloud providers can be anybody you can think of. It is like French Revolution where the peasants are coming out of nowhere with pitch forks or anything they can lay their hands on. Any combination of computing resources can participate in Cloud Computing not just only those that are applicable to technology companies such as EMC, IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc. Truly, new kids on the block can take part in it because we all are now officially becoming citizens of DWC “Democratic Webpublic of Cloud”. Anyhow, it is extremely important that EMC to boldly go where no man has gone before in order to jump start itself into the new Enterprise 2.0 world. EMC has a lot of very interesting stacks including software and hardware that can be used for that purpose. Do not just keep tossing your atmospheric Atmos alone: the time may be right to throw everything you’ve got including your cast iron kitchen sinks into the Cloud!
Posted by: shiningarts | May 19, 2009 at 07:22 PM