As we plummet down into Gartner's "trough of disillusionment", the cloud
skeptics are making their voices heard. Although my professional focus is at
the forefront of the cloud storage wave, I can not disagree with the content
of articles with sensational headlines like "Cloud Storage: It's Strictly For
Airheads" and "Why Cloud Storage Use Could Be Limited in Enterprises". The
authors are doing exactly what everyone should be doing: Questioning the
viability and suitability of cloud storage in the enterprise.
The truth is, although I'm not the "cloud police", not all managed storage
services are created equal. In fact, lots of them are, to put it bluntly, not
worth much. Many cloud backup and archiving services use bare un-protected
disk drives to store data, have no red... (more)
Much discussion in the cloud computing world has focused on a simple
question: Is a private cloud infrastructure worthy of the name? It's been
posed in many ways, with some going so far as claiming that there is no such
thing as a private cloud. Although discussions like these are all too common
in many areas, the question really amounts to little more than counting
angels dancing on pin... (more)
Take a look at the various data storage offerings called "cloud" and your
head will start to ache. How can so many things all bear the "cloud storage"
name and yet be so totally different? The answer is obvious to long-time
industry observers: Each provider has tailored their offering to make it
distinct in the market, and each supports different use cases
Infrastructure versus Platform
A... (more)
The current economic climate is pushing many to look for current-year budget
savings. This is one of the major reasons that cloud computing in general,
and cloud storage specifically, has become so attractive. Moving data into
the cloud doesn't just get it out of the data center, it converts a capital
expense (storage equipment) into an operational one (monthly fees).
But cloud storage is... (more)
As discussed last week, cloud storage solutions differ in many ways. They can
be defined by their pricing model (usage-based or capitalized), their
location (on-site or off-site), the granularity of scalability (per-file,
standard unit, or per-system), and whether or not they are multi-tenant. But
one of the less-discussed but much more technically-challenging
differentiators lies in the... (more)
Stephen Foskett has provided vendor-independent end user consulting on storage topics for over 10 years. He has been a storage columnist and has authored numerous articles for industry publications. Stephen is a popular presenter at industry events and recently received Microsoft’s MVP award for contributions to the enterprise storage community. As the director of consulting for Nirvanix, Foskett provides strategic consulting to assist Fortune 500 companies in developing strategies for service-based tiered and cloud storage. He holds a bachelor of science in Society/Technology Studies, from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Paula Cheung
Saurabh Verma
Jocelyn Quimbo
Gary Hamilton
Jeff Anders
Vikas Aggarwal 
