Cloud Hosting

Just a few years ago, enterprises were rapidly shifting to a cloud-first IT model in the expectation that moving operations to the cloud would solve many, if not all, of ITs roadblocks, while offering few, if any, drawbacks. The public cloud delivered a new kind of IT and a new kind of experience scalable, seamless, and simplified. Cloud set the standard for agility with an operational model that enabled customers to deploy new apps and services quickly and easily.

In the years since, many organizations have found that public cloud simply isnt right for every workload. Case in point: the vast majority of enterprise apps and data remain on-premises today because of security, data sovereignty, and latency concerns to say nothing of the complexity of migrating and rearchitecting apps for the public cloud.

From the experience of moving to public cloud (and sometimes back again), the technology ambitions of enterprises have shifted from cloud first to cloud everywhere. And this approach, in which IT can harness as-a-service IT resources via a cloud operational model from edge to core to cloud, is now essential to successful transformation.

In fact, according to analyst group ESG, 91% of IT leaders identify mature cloud operations on-prem as the single most important step to eliminating complexity, moving faster, and accelerating innovation.

In powering a transformation journey with an edge-to-cloud, cloud operational model, finding the right solution for primary storage is critical. On-prem storage as a service (STaaS) would appear to fit the bill and yet the ability to unlock agility and drive innovation with STaaS offerings has been limited to date.

Why? For starters, managed services come at a premium; theyre the right fit for large-scale customer deployments, but they come at a higher cost. Moreover, most STaaS offerings, which typically commit to four 9s of availability, are not suitable for mission-critical apps that require six 9s or even 100% availability. Finally, current STaaS vendors dont deliver self-service agility. Theyve introduced pay-as-you-go consumption, which is fine as far as it reaches, but you still must deal with a traditional storage management experience, including the need for storage domain expertise beyond Day 1.

Its time to move past the limitations of existing STaaS offerings, to a storage as a service model that truly delivers for every workload across the lifecycle what we could term STaaS for all. This new model of STaaS radically simplifies data and infrastructure management by leveraging industry-leading AIOps to streamline Day 2 operations and beyond making underlying data infrastructure invisible while shifting operations to be app, not infrastructure, centric.

STaaS for all guarantees 100% data availability for mission-critical apps, as well as an industry-leading six 9s for all other workloads, making it the best choice for all your applications. With STaaS for all, organizations can truly accelerate transformation with attribute-based ordering and intent-based provisioning, saving operational time and eliminating the need for storage expertise. Thats what will unlock the benefits of the cloud operational model on-prem.

Given this outline of capabilities, how can IT decision-makers break down a vendors on-prem STaaS offering to determine whether its a solution that can truly transform enterprise storage operations? Youll first need to look for end-to-end, self-service agility with an AI-driven cloud experience that enables your organization to:

For those organizations looking to harness the full potential of STaaS for all, HPE GreenLake for Block Storage shows the way. Capable of removing all the roadblocks and compromises associated with current STaaS offerings, HPE GreenLake for Block Storage is the industrys first block storage as a service to offer self-service agility and a 100% availability guarantee built-in for mission-critical applications.

In bringing the self-service cloud operational model to on-prem workloads, HPE GreenLake for Block Storage helps you speed digital transformation, empowering LOB and application admins to accelerate app deployment by effortlessly self-provisioning storage instantly and without going to the public cloud. Plus, it enables IT teams both to transform from operator to service provider and to start managing business outcomes instead of infrastructure.

As a further benefit, HPE GreenLake for Block Storage runs on the HPE GreenLake Edge to Cloud Platform, which offers dozens of other advanced cloud data services delivered on demand via a unified cloud operating experience to comprehensively power enterprise IT with unrivaled flexibility and speed. To take just one example, organizations can modernize with SaaS-based data protection that effortlessly covers on-premises and cloud resources across hybrid clouds.

For much more on choosing the right storage-as-a-service solution to accelerate your business transformation, consult our STaaS buyers guide.

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Simon Watkins is a Worldwide Senior Product Marketing Manager with HPE Storage.The 20-year veteran of the storage industry started his career in data protection, and spent the last few years working in primary storage, most recently helping drive the transformation of the HPE Storage business from a hardware vendor to a cloud data services provider. He holds an Executive MBA from the London Business School as well as a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Cambridge University in the UK.

Link:
Storage as a Service Can Drive Transformation If Its Agile Enough for All Workloads - CIO