The promise of “the cloud” is that cloud storage delivers users seamless “just in time” storage scalability to handle growth and quickly respond to peak loads. The economics and business impact of cloud storage also delivers a compelling financial proposition in today’s budget constrained IT environments. To the IT consumer shifting what was a capital expense and a fixed cost to a variable cost operating expense is financially compelling. Additionally, the ability to function in a “just in time” mode versus a “predictive” model for consumable storage also changes the CAPEX impact further assisting in justifying an already strong value proposition for adopting cloud storage.
IDC forecasts that cloud-based storage will represent a $15.6B market by 2015 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32%. They also predict 10,000 service providers will focus on cloud storage with a data protection emphasis. The economics of this market transition will continue to evolve and accelerate as costs of delivering cloud services are optimized by service providers that become more efficient – ever mindful of the cost of their plant/facility, operating expenses and business margins.