Thursday, 6 August 2015 Blog ehdf

Benefits of Outsourcing your Data Storage Needs

The magnitude of information that we store as emails, videos and other form of media is ever-increasing, resulting in an explosion of user generated data. This makes data storage and data management more critical than ever. At the same time, businesses are presented with multiple storage options, making it difficult for them to determine the best data storage solution. There has also been a rapid development of cloud storage solutions and a wide range of cloud storage solutions are available. From private to public to hybrid cloud options, businesses, particularly SMEs, can become rightfully confused.

Outsourcing VS In-house: There are multiple benefits of outsourcing data storage:

1. Cost Savings – By using a cloud provider for data storage, enterprises can benefit from economies of scale. This is because the company can leverage shared systems of the service provider and need not invest in hardware, servers or other capital expenditure (CAPEX). Often, service providers offer subscription-for-service, or pay-per-use model, with a monthly subscription fe

2. Greater Reliability and Availability – Service providers often offer a round-the-clock service desk to answer questions or address to crises. They also guarantee availability and uptime

3. Maintenance – Storage hardware or software, when located on-premise, needs to maintained in relation to its environment, temperature and security. It would be more secure when maintained in a managed data centre, handled by experts who have 24 x 7 monitoring mechanisms, controlled facilities and contingency plans in cases of disasters or emergencies.

4. Off-Site Backup – Having a third-party location for your data storage needs is beneficial in cases of emergencies or natural disasters

5. Core business focus- Organizations are turning to outsourcing because of the need to focus on their core-business activities.

Today, businesses have to choose between multiple storage options- NAS, SAN, Cloud, Managed Remote Backup & Archiving, etc. In order to choose the right data storage solution, consider the following:

1. Nature of data (Structured or Unstructured) – Companies need storage to cater to either structured, easily searchable data (which is done using simple algorithms and computer operations) or unstructured data, which is a more time consuming and complicated process

2. IOPS (input/output operations per second) requirements

3. Data replication requirements – Companies must determine whether they require information transfer from a shared server to a distributed database, subject to internal policy to access data conveniently and without interfering with other IT operations

4. Data retention policies – CIOs must also take into consideration the company’s protocol for retaining data on operational or regulatory bases. This is done internally by considering value of data over time. It is an important practice within hospitals, government agencies and regulation authorities as all data cannot be maintained and securely stored indefinitely

5. RTO and RPO associated with the storage application – Businesses that cannot afford downtime must clearly state their recovery time objective (RTO) and their recovery point objective (RPO) to the service provider, who can then put in place a business continuity plan

6. Sensitivity / Confidentiality of internal data – Organizations often choose hosted platforms such as public or hosted private cloud, based on the level of control and accessibility rights that they and any third parties may have to their data. Storage technologies need to be selected on the basis of security needs as well.