Proceed carefully with cloud storage, says Gartner
January 5, 2013
Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.
Storing information in the public cloud from a growing market of vendors is a viable alternative to on-premise, traditional storage options for some use cases, research firm Gartner says. But cloud-based storage providers vary widely in their ability to meet the requirements of enterprise IT, which is why customers should rigorously plan and vet vendors before first engaging in a pilot and then deciding if mission-critical data should be moved into the cloud-based storage service.
The benefits of cloud-based storage are similar to those offered by other forms of cloud computing: It can provide significant cost and agility benefits to end user customers. Concerns around security, privacy and accessibility – which are common concerns for other cloud use cases as well – also exist in the cloud storage market, however…
The vendor landscape in the cloud storage market is budding. Big-name traditional storage vendors – Microsoft and IBM – are competing with up and coming all-cloud companies like Amazon Web Services and Nirvanix, while other companies are migrating from managed hosting into a set of cloud storage offerings. Initial vendors will compete on pricing, security and resiliency, Gartner says, while "forward-looking" providers differentiate on service reliability, support, ease of management, turnkey deployments and integrated value-add services…
Read more from the source @ http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/cloud-computing/3418466/proceed-carefully-with-cloud-storage-says-gartner/