Storage as a Service (StaaS)
What is Storage as a Service (StaaS)?
Storage as a Service (StaaS) is a way for organizations to manage storage capacity and workloads without the overhead costs of upfront capital for storage hardware and software or staff time. Organizations subscribe to storage services and simply access and use a vendor’s infrastructure on demand.
What is StaaS in cloud computing?
StaaS offers cloud procurement and remote management of storage, whether on-premises, co-located, or across a hybrid cloud environment. Organizations buy storage in the same way they buy other cloud services, selecting how much capacity they need for compute, networking, and storage, and specifying their own encryption and security policies to be administered.
Why use StaaS?
Because storage is one of the costliest data center operations, with rising IT staff time required to manage the market’s ever-increasing data volume, it makes sense to subscribe to StaaS. With StaaS, organizations can centralize operations and improve cost management. With a flexible capacity that dynamically changes on demand, workloads are better managed without disruption or compromise. And because StaaS offers utility-like consumption pricing, organizations can allocate budgets more accurately.
What are the benefits of Storage as a Service?
Offering a zero-touch, set-it-and-forget-it experience, StaaS offers a dynamic way to simplify IT operations, complete with the ability to predict and fine-tune storage, all while keeping pace with the soaring data growth that comes from cloud and edge applications. With StaaS, enterprise IT can:
- Avoid over-provisioning:The provider administers monitoring, load balancing, and planning capacity, so resources can be right-sized on an ongoing basis.
- Reduce infrastructure costs: Storage vendors provide all infrastructure, including hardware arrays, so users no longer need to purchase any storage resources ahead of time, making storage an operational expense instead of a capital-intensive upfront cost.
- Centralize: With StaaS, storage is pooled and can be accessed through one unified interface, which reduces data sprawl and helps consolidate infrastructure overall.
- Scale capacity and workload: Subscribers of StaaS gain a level of storage responsiveness that scales automatically, dynamically adjusting to changing application, user, and performance demands continuously.
- Support digital transformation: By offloading storage management, staff can concentrate on business objectives of greater value to the business, powering an increased pace of innovation.
- Decrease latency: With early issue detection and proactive support, StaaS allows organizations to head off performance issues that can cost a company as much as one percent in sales revenue per 100 milliseconds of latency.
Issues to consider with Storage as a Service
Handing off storage management does come with some potential drawbacks that IT managers should consider. These include:
Integration issues
Organizations often have significant investments sunk into a fleet of storage hardware, which may or may not be compatible with a vendor’s offerings. And while selling off the legacy hardware is possible, getting the full value out of the deal can be difficult.
Incomplete coverage
Some providers are limited in what storage protocols and deployment options they offer, or even provide limited integration with leading public cloud platforms. These may not go all the way to support your heterogeneous and hybrid infrastructure.
Availability
Not all vendors provide a guarantee for performance or effective capacity. Subscribers should negotiate if there are critical service-level agreement (SLA) requirements.
Limited support
Response times and the technical expertise of post-sales support staff can vary greatly between vendors. In addition, getting extended support and maintenance after the original agreements expire can lead to steep increases in costs long-term.
Political issues
Vendors based in countries outside the United States may be subject to sanctions or other geopolitical conflicts that may limit their ability to provide consistent service.
HPE and Storage as a Service
HPE has been an innovator in as a service offerings across the board, from servers to hypervisors to networks to storage, providing the expertise and cost savings organizations need to remain competitive in a data-driven marketplace. We bring decades of thought leadership and deep market understanding into designing our storage infrastructure and strategies to support clients in their data modernization initiatives.
HPE Alletra provides cloudlike, invisible infrastructure that is AI-driven, which allows IT to offload owning and maintaining data storage to simply accessing and using it. Using HPE’s subscription-based Data Services Cloud Console (DSCC) management platform, organizations get intent-based provisioning, upgrades, and data services through a consumption experience wherever their data lives.
HPE GreenLake for Storage offers a cloud experience everywhere, so you can eliminate storage complexity, simplify operations, and run any application with the right performance and resilience. HPE GreenLake for Block Storage is the industry’s first storage as a service that offers self-service and a 100% availability guarantee built-in for mission-critical environments. It simplifies on-prem storage with SLA-driven quoting and ordering, and AI-driven self-service provisioning for line of business and DBAs. HPE GreenLake cloud services provide partner-integrated and bundled solutions, such as EPIC, for key vertical industry applications, thereby accelerating time to production value.