Fuelled by today’s more affordable bandwidth and capacity optimisation technologies, StaaS is becoming a popular alternative to portable media, such as tapes and CDs, for small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Staas is particularly attractive to SMEs because its ‘pay-as-you-go’ pricing assists them to fund storage and backup services from operational budgets, rather than capital outlay. This is an increasingly attractive proposition in the current economic climate.
From a technical perspective StaaS is an Internet-driven application, hosted and operated at a central location and typically accessed via a browser-based interface. It is characterised as having a shared, scalable infrastructure that keeps data virtually separated.
Convenience is a key benefit of a StaaS solution, as stored information can be accessed from any Internet-connected device and more easily managed, searched, retrieved and transferred.
Outsourcing is a viable concept, as demonstrated by the success of enterprise application development, CRM, business automation and other outsourced tools increasingly adopted by cost-conscious SMEs.
Up to now, SMEs without the resources of an IT department to rely on for security implementations have been uncomfortable with the idea of turning over their primary storage to an outsource vendor.
However, new-generation StaaS offerings are succeeding because vendors have refocused their attention on secondary storage applications, such as backup and archiving, and SMEs are more comfortable dealing with outsourced companies in these areas.
Security is boosted by the fact that StaaS providers generally employ the latest technology in certified data centres. In addition to the security that accompanies their certification, many providers offer 24/7 monitoring, management and reporting – capabilities that may be beyond the reach of many SMEs looking to manage their own data storage repositories.
For SMEs, one of the key benefits of StaaS is its ability to combine the benefits of on- and off-premises components. For backup and archiving, the user has on-premise control of software and, optionally, hardware. At the same time the user is able to leverage the infrastructures of the service provider, such as the data centre mentioned above together with extensive network and other resources.
SMEs also benefit because there is no need to be concerned about upgrades, migrations or technology obsolescence as these issues are taken care of by the service provider.
StaaS’ ability to facilitate predictable management of capacity growth and operational costs also makes it attractive to organisations looking to invest in a disaster recovery (DR) infrastructure.
Compared to a DR site, there are often greater efficiency and cost savings benefits to be gained from a StaaS implementation. For example, off-site data copies – accessible from any Internet-connected device or location – provide an added measure of insurance in the event of a regional disaster.
By John Hope-Bailie, technical director of Demand Data
