Nicos Vekiarides is the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Twinstrata, a market innovator producing cloud storage enablement software. He has spent the last 18 years in the data storage field, both as a business manager and as an entrepreneur and founder in multiple startup companies.CloudStorageStrategy.com asked him a few questions about "Intelligent Storage Cloud" and what it means for the enterprise. We also discussed the business impact of TwinStrata's Cloud Array™ offering. Note: Twinstrata is a Mezeo Ready Solution Partner.
A recent blog post in the Harvard Business Review referred to cloud computing as still hype. How does your everyday business reality show a different perspective? We are seeing quite the opposite as cloud technology is maturing quite rapidly and, in our experience, is resulting in accelerated end user acceptance and adoption. Cloud storage offerings, such as Mezeo, are available today and in use, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers across a growing service provider ecosystem. Our reality is that many end-users are opting for the compelling value proposition of storage-as-a-service and the pay-as-you-go pricing model.
No doubt, there is some confusion in the marketplace that fuels the notion of hype. We believe companies like ours who offer tangible business solutions and benefits are proving out that cloud offerings are real and here to stay. When a technology addresses real pain points in the marketplace and offers customers seamless solutions that easily integrate with existing environments and applications, there is strong business interest.
Can you tell us about your vision for "intelligent storage clouds"? What does this vision mean for the Enterprise CIO?
"Intelligent storage clouds" give cloud storage the look, feel and performance of local enterprise-class storage and address real pain points businesses have today, particularly when it comes to deploying off-site storage, easily and securely.
To the CIO, it means enhancing data protection and disaster recovery capabilities at significant cost savings without deploying infrastructure and incurring administration expense. At the same time, it means reducing risk by leveraging existing policies, software and infrastructure without disruptive changes.
Finally, the "intelligent storage cloud" is a key enabler of what we call the Compute Anywhere™ data center, a hybrid on-premise/cloud data center with access to on-demand storage and compute resources that give IT increased agility to meet business needs.
How does "storage-as-a service" change the datacenter?
"Storage as a service" represents a substantial change to how and when infrastructure is deployed in the data center. The pay-as-you-go model eliminates the waste that comes with dedicated but underutilized storage infrastructure. At the same time, it levels the playing field for smaller enterprises, giving them access to economies of scale and global infrastructures that their larger counterparts enjoy.
This does not mean we see primary data storage infrastructure disappearing overnight. Instead, we initially see cloud storage providing a better alternative to remote datacenters. Think of it as pay-as-you-go unlimited offsite storage capacity but without the traditional administrative burden, physical costs and storage deployment cycle. Consider it an offsite storage array that doesn't require the standard 3-yr hardware refresh cycle: purchasing more capacity than is needed at the outset, realizing low utilization over a large portion of the investment and the unavoidable and arduous task of migrating data to new hardware to begin a new cycle.
In the primary data center, similar benefits can be achieved via the ability to move archival tiers of storage to the cloud. This can help ease constraints around power, cooling and floor space as storage capacities continue to expand.
Can you describe your Cloud Array offering and how it impacts the business?
CloudArray is iSCSI SAN software that allows any data center to connect to cloud storage without the need to program to specific API's. CloudArray supports block level access and any industry standard file system, enabling and accelerating cloud storage deployments for business. It does this by removing inhibitors around integration, performance, availability and security.
Most importantly, CloudArray enables solutions that directly address today's top IT business initiatives. IT professionals are asking for solutions that offer off-site storage for data backups, replication, disaster recovery, archiving and even deployment of new applications. CloudArray does this with minimal hardware, and a significantly reduced administrative footprint, using a software platform and a pay-as-you-go model.
What is the market telling you? Is the recession an opportunity?
The market, particularly the midmarket, is telling us that they want cost-effective business solutions for their off-site data protection. That's today. What they are also telling us is that they are looking for a robust on-demand compute and storage capability that will address an even broader variety of needs in the future. CloudArray enables cloud storage providers to offer a compelling value proposition from day one with a path that meets future needs.
As for the recession, we've found it to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is causing some companies to cling to the status quo, sticking with sometimes inferior IT processes and infrastructure, and putting off refresh cycles until the economy improves. On the other hand, it is causing other companies, large and small, to rethink how they deploy storage infrastructure and take a closer look at alternative solutions such as cloud technology.
Interestingly, the companies who are clinging to existing methodologies may soon find themselves at a disadvantage as their more nimble competitors find a way to leverage the cloud.
We recently published a Cloud Storage Maturity Model on our blog. We're interested to get your feedback on the model.
We certainly agree that cloud storage adoption will have distinct phases and find the model very well thought out. We see the enablers of cloud storage, such as TwinStrata, not only accelerating immediate adoption, but also enabling private and federated models in the longer term.
Overall, we see cloud storage maturing quite rapidly as more customers start deriving business benefit. This is not all that different from where we were with server virtualization several years ago. Back then, virtualization was more a technology than a business initiative and was not yet synonymous with server consolidation and cost savings . Today, virtualization ranks as a top IT initiative for all businesses, both large and small.
