The current pandemic has proven to be a catalyst to accelerate digitisation and approach IT differently. It has to be because there is also a completely different meaning of ROI, namely ‘Risk of Inaction’: doing nothing and leaving everything as it was. By not making a choice, the organisation falls behind and can no longer be competitive. At the same time, how and in what to invest is under a magnifying glass. Everyone wants the best and latest technology to meet the challenges ahead. But poor investments and innovation for the sake of innovation will lead to unnecessary expenditure and underwhelming results. This makes investing in your own IT environment a very uncertain exercise.
Stop investing in expensive transformations
The typical IT budget cycles of 18 months, which are based on a procurement model and upgrades that come down to completely replacing systems, are a thing of the past and therefore no longer appropriate for today’s times. Plans often have to be adapted quickly to meet new and unforeseen demands and IT has to be able to move rapidly in tandem. In addition, budgets are tightening, especially in times of the current economic uncertainty, while yield requirements are only increasing. Those who opt for a flexible usage model do not have to invest in expensive upfront CAPEX purchases. Digitisation projects can proceed with less risk of skyrocketing costs and budget shortfalls.
Benefits of Storage-as-a-service (STaaS)
Transformation to a modern, data-driven organisation places heavy demands on flexibility, capacity, performance, scalability and reliability of storage systems. As mentioned, this used to involve a lot of planning, buying capacity based on predicted growth which led to overprovisioning and waste, and replacing the entire storage system every few years. This was logistically, technically and financially a huge operation. STaaS offers a solution to this. According to a recent Harvard Business Review study, 76 percent of organisations are either currently using or considering the adoption of STaaS in the next two years. This tells you all you need to know about how important a trend STaaS is.
As-a-service models deliver the flexibility and elasticity needed to respond to changing business requirements without a large up-front investment. CIOs are also able to avoid vendor lock-in, as subscriptions, if it is a true subscription model and not a lease, can be discontinued at the end of the term if they no longer fit the requirements of the business. There are no assets to dispose of or that need accelerated depreciation.
STaaS is a good option for companies that need infrastructure that lets them accommodate different capacity, data types, connectivity and service levels, and the ability to use any of these options for short and longer-term projects without operational and cost penalties. It eliminates a great deal of the complexity around data storage and reduces friction, cost, and intricacies associated with sharing data across the enterprise.
In addition, STaaS can remove the burden of admin and maintenance from storage management. We want and can free the people from IT so that they don’t need to deal with maintenance, but can be devoted to the development and deployment of new services and create added value. Transferring routine activities on a specialised service provider is similar to other and more familiar cloud models, such as SaaS or IaaS.
Digitising at full speed
STaaS is a modern flexible solution for data storage in the cloud and on-premises. This frees organisations from the costly storage replacement cycle and having to overprovision with excess capacity.
However, the key pitfall businesses need to avoid is choosing a ‘service’ which is actually just a rebadged lease. In the storage industry today, every vendor is talking about delivering a service, but too many fall short of a true as-a-service experience. They only give the illusion of providing a service with no real value-add or obligation. Most vendors are delivering OPEX billing and not true STaaS. Many times, they’re just dressed up leases. It’s the opposite of what enterprise customers are looking for and what they expect to receive. For genuine STaaS, monitoring, a Service-Level Objective and a Service Level Agreement should be the starting point. Without monitoring and an obligation to deliver what has been agreed, there is no real service. This means, for example, that if the agreed performance and capacity are jeopardised, the provider must resolve this proactively. Thus, capacity must always be expandable without downtime when necessary. Moreover, organisations are always assured of the latest technology, just as with Software-as-a-Service, upgrades and innovations are included. The result is that organisations can digitally transform their business at full speed. But without the, until recently, associated major financial and operational risks.
With STaaS in place, what comes next?
STaaS has the power to accelerate organisations’ digital transformation efforts and help them do more with their data. CIOs can better align technology with business goals and reshape their organisation so that the people responsible for storage can leave mundane management monotony behind them and become more creative and innovative: cost-effectiveness follows; productivity follows; innovation follows; business growth follows. And in today’s global digital economy, could there be any stronger case than that for true STaaS?
