About a dozen years ago, the storage utility model was a novel concept. The idea was that businesses could literally plug applications into enterprise storage, enabling them to outsource administration and begin paying on a monthly usage basis. While the concept was attractive, unfortunately, many of the storage service providers (SSPs) who sprouted back then couldn’t quite perfect the model. Fast forward to today. Over the past 5 years, cloud storage providers (CSPs) have successfully made the delivery of on-demand data storage to the premises a reality, with a pay-as-go model backed by huge economies of scale.