Top 5 Enterprise Storage as-a-Service Solutions

This report, published on July 14, 2022, was written by Ken Clipperton, lead analyst, DCIG, LLC.

2022-23 DCIG TOP 5 Enterprise Storage as-a-Service Solutions Report Now Available

DCIG is announced the availability of the 2022-23 TOP 5 Enterprise Storage as-a-Service Solutions report. This report provides guidance on the TOP 5 solutions enterprises should consider for their storage as a service requirements.

Storage as-a-Service Defined
DCIG defines storage as-a-service (STaaS) as a storage consumption model where enterprises purchase storage as a subscription with billing based on storage usage, whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud. Storage vendors bill for usage based on various metrics, generally some combination of capacity and performance.

STaaS offers new acquisition and deployment options that give organizations greater agility and flexibility in deploying storage capacity whenever and wherever needed, without sacrificing the enterprise data services they rely on to store and protect vital corporate data. STaaS solutions offer multiple business benefits.

Benefits of STaaS

Financial
The traditional enterprise storage acquisition process involves estimating storage requirements several years into the future and selecting and purchasing storage based on those estimates. With STaaS, enterprises pay only for the storage they currently need. The vendor monitors usage and adds capacity and performance resources as necessary during the agreement term.

STaaS enables organizations to preserve cash by:
• spending less upfront
• aligning costs more closely with revenue
• eliminating waste due to forecasting errors
• protecting budgets from cost surprises through simple, predictable pricing

While some people look at STaaS primarily as a model for financing infrastructure that aligns cost with actual usage, others see it as a mechanism to bring the cloud operating model to on-premises storage or as a tactical move to enable them to move workloads to the cloud.

Agility and flexibility
A well-executed STaaS deployment should do more than conserve cash. It should also deliver greater agility and flexibility to support changing business requirements, especially unexpected events that fall within the planning horizon. These include events as dramatic as a global pandemic or as mundane as putting a new application into production.

STaaS enhances agility by speeding up the initial deployment of the solution. STaaS reduces the number of hours enterprises must invest upfront in developing detailed forecasts of performance and capacity requirements. Instead, they only need to understand if the STaaS solution fits their current requirements and can scale to meet their likely future requirements.

STaaS also enhances agility by speeding the implementation of new applications. Solution providers pre-install extra storage beyond the contracted capacity. This buffer capacity is immediately available for allocation. STaaS providers also monitor storage utilization and add capacity and performance resources as the customer’s utilization reaches agreed-upon thresholds. Thus, a good STaaS solution ensures that projects move forward without being delayed by the traditional months-long storage acquisition process.

Most STaaS solutions provide self-service and automation capabilities. Giving developers and application owners self-service provisioning of storage resources, self-service data recovery, and automated data protection accelerates application development and deployment by eliminating time-consuming, error-prone manual processes.  

Expert management and support
With STaaS, organizations can benefit from storage acceleration and scalability of the latest storage systems without having to become experts in those systems. Most STaaS providers are responsible for keeping their solutions updated and available. Enterprise IT still manages storage volumes for its applications, but the provider manages the underlying storage system(s). Customers benefit from the provider’s expertise in managing its solution while reducing the time IT staff must dedicate to maintaining storage systems.

Reduced risk
Traditional storage management requires specialized skills, and the departure of staff with those skills creates business risk. STaaS solutions reduce this staffing risk through vendor-provided expert monitoring, management, and maintenance of the storage infrastructure.

Sustainability
STaaS can also contribute to enterprise sustainability goals. It enables more effective use of energy and materials by avoiding the traditional overprovisioning of storage systems. Some STaaS offerings incorporate complete lifecycle hardware management, including responsible refurbishing or recycling.

TOP 5 Enterprise Storage as-a-Service Solutions
DCIG analysts evaluated these solutions based on the following feature categories and the value these features provide to enterprises:
• Deployment Options
• Licensing and Pricing
• Product Features
• Technical Support

Based on these criteria, DCIG awarded the following offerings a TOP 5 ranking (in alphabetical order):
• IBM Storage as-a-Service
• Infinidat Storage as-a-Service
• Nutanix Unified Storage as-a-Service
• Pure Storage Evergreen//One
• Zadara zStorage