COVID-19 is changing economies worldwide, and the new economy changes storage economics. Today, lowering the cost of storage infrastructure is more critical than ever. Equally important, however, is increasing efficiency, getting more from your storage investment and simplifying the architecture so that it requires fewer IT staff to run it. Another necessary change is the need to have vendors remotely walk their customers through installation. No longer can they send teams of storage gurus in to install their overly complicated solutions.
How Will Vendors Respond to New Storage Economics
The problem is for many organizations, this new economy caused by COVID-19, is a whole new world. They need to cut their prices, accepting lower margins at a time when profits are already scarce. Vendors need to figure out how to make their solutions appeal to a broader range of use cases because the philosophy of a storage system per use case no longer makes sense. Finally, they need to fumble their way through installing their solutions remotely because most organizations won’t let any outsider into their facility.
How StorONE Responds to New Storage Economics
We built StorONE on a foundation of efficiency. Our solution is cost-effective, permanently. We don’t need to cut prices, and you don’t need to worry if you will be able to afford to upgrade it when the time comes. StorONE will continue to be the most cost-effective solution on the market. We also don’t need to expand our use cases. The StorONE S1 Enterprise Platform supports many use cases. It supports block, file, and object. We also, from a single storage software platform, cover the entire spectrum of performance and capacity demands. Lastly, our engineers already perform most of our installations remotely. Doing contactless installs is not a new initiative for us; we design our software as user-installable. During our live webinar you’ll be able to watch a remote installation in real time.
Some Things Remain the Same Despite New Storage Economics
Before COVID-19, the storage infrastructure landscape was far from perfect. Data protection was tops on everyone’s mind as there was an ever-increasing threat from cyber-attacks. Unfortunately, cyber-criminals can also “work from home,” so the danger is still present. In addition to finding storage systems that are more affordable, easier to use, and remotely installable, IT also needs to find invincible storage so they can improve their ability to maintain data integrity and increase data resilience. StorONE’s data protection suite delivers data resilience while also reducing the organization’s need to further its investment in the backup infrastructure.
Also important is the ability to meet the need for more performance despite the new storage economics. While more of a company’s employees may work from home, they are still accessing the same applications. The need to address performance concerns has not lessened. Maintaining performance and even increasing it while still curtailing costs is vital to the organization’s success.
Storage Consolidation – More Important than Ever
Before COVID-19, there was a massive increase in the number of storage systems the typical data center used to meet the demands of an ever-increasing number of workloads. After COVID-19 the number of workloads is not decreasing; in fact, it continues to increase. The problem is IT headcount, at best, is flat, but more than likely it is shrinking too as companies look for ways to reduce expenses.
The need to consolidate workloads is now vital to the success and profitability of the organization. The new storage economics emphasizes the problems with storage disaggregation. Consolidation simplifies storage management and leads to a direct reduction in the number of IT personnel an organization needs. The problem is most (a.k.a. ALL) consolidation solutions are costly and typically don’t achieve the full goal of 100% storage consolidation. At StorONE, we believe we can consolidate all workloads to a single software platform, while at the same time significantly reducing costs.
IT Needs a New Option for the New Economy
When the new economy changes storage economics, IT professionals, who count on legacy storage solutions, are left in a no-win situation. Meeting the old, and still present challenges means violating the new economics. Meeting modern storage economics means stagnating organizational growth and eliminating competitive advantage.
IT needs a new option so they can win! We believe that StorONE is the answer. The new and old storage economics are things we’ve been addressing for years. If you’re looking for a company that can help you solve the new realities while keeping your business competitive, we have something to show you.
You can register for a free personalized demo here, or sign up for our next webinar which is a live demonstration of a contactless installation:
