Many companies have been forced to re-think their IT strategies in recent times to help reduce costs and it’s getting harder as the austerity cuts start to bite. IT managers are trying to manage an ever-rising tide of data with lower budgets and struggling to find ways to align the business requirements with demands for cost savings from the CFO.
Resellers are in a strong position to demonstrate the value of their relationship by helping advise IT managers on the best solutions to achieve this goal and one way is to cut storage costs in a number of ways by moving to the cloud.
Companies can free up expensive storage on SAN
Channel partners can help companies to understand that reorganising their existing environment by moving data from a local SAN to a cloud storage solution can free up capacity on expensive storage hardware and lower the total cost of ownership. With cloud prices decreasing, this will also provide an affordable alternative for archiving data and using retention polices to be in compliance with internal polices.Resellers can also explain that archiving and accommodating retention polices for data that is not accessed frequently on primary expensive SAN technology is unnecessary. A benefit of moving to cloud is it will minimise (or postpone) the need to expand local storage capacity. By advising customers on how to move selected corporate data from physical systems to the cloud, resellers can help them to lower the total cost of ownership for storage environments.
Advise on choosing an off-site location that requires limited capital investment
Another way resellers can deliver cost savings to customers is to help them use the cloud to rebalance capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expense (OPEX) with the CIO and CFO budgets.A second location for backups is an easy way for companies to keep data available and protected, especially in the case of a failure. Companies still sending tapes off-site are creating an additional layer of complexity and cost because tapes need to be tracked manually by the IT manager, who needs to liaise with a third party when a tape is required and waste time waiting for the actual delivery.In many instances, the CIO will not want to invest money in a second location and commit to spending more CAPEX budget. Resellers can advise that one way to add off-site backup to an existing data strategy is to backup to the cloud and use this solution as a second location.
Replace tape with cloud
Tape has been a cost effective solution for data archiving for many years, but in today’s fast moving corporate world where data integrity, speed of recovery and reliability have become increasingly important, customers may not understand that tape is struggling to meet those demands.Many organisations need to archive data to meet retention and compliance policies, with archives commonly stored between one and ten years. But they may not be aware that tape failure rate increases over time. According to figures from Gartner, tapes older than five years average a 40-45 percent failure rate on all restores caused by data corruption and failure of the physical tape. Although tape is cheap to buy, the cost of moving tapes and storing them off-site, combined with service and support, can add over 45 percent to the total cost for archived data.
Reduce operational costs by offering a centralised solution
Channel partners are in a strong position to make the argument that data stored in the cloud can help businesses can save on the operational costs that make up a significant portion of the total cost of ownership. A centralised solution helps keep IT managers up to speed and in control of all backups, archiving and compliance with retention strategies across the organisation. This is a significant benefit when restoring data in the case of a disaster, retrieving archives in case of legal litigation or executing a deletion on an archive for retention polices.
Cloud not for everyone (yet)
There are various reasons why every company should consider moving to the cloud but factors such as compliancy, legacy systems and protecting corporate data need to be taken into consideration before making the move. It will take some time until these issues will be overcome, but eventually the cloud will find its way to every organisation and across all industries. Channel partners that ensure their customers are well-prepared for this change stand to reap significant benefits while strengthening their relationship.
