FEATURE : ENTERPRISE STORAGE the growth and demand for advanced data storage solutions in MEA .”
Cloud versus on-premise storage
Given that enterprise cloud storage consists of storage capacity purchased from a public cloud service provider , enterprises often turn to cloud storage to reduce or eliminate excessive on-premises storage costs , reduce the complexity of managing storage and upgrade data centre infrastructure . The three major public cloud storage providers are Amazon Web Services ( AWS ), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure . Others include Alibaba Cloud , IBM ’ s Bluemix , Oracle and Rackspace , as well as a host of regional providers .
“ We are seeing an increasing interest in cloud adoption as part of the accelerated Digital Transformation strategies of most enterprise companies ,” said NetApp ’ s Kanafani . According to Kanafani , NetApp engagements with the major hyper-scalers is particularly important to support our customers in leveraging cloud storage resources to deliver the business outcomes they are seeking . “ As a cloud led , data-centric , hybrid multi-cloud software organisation , NetApp is helping customers to make the right choices , balancing the different clouds , to create the optimal environment to manage their data securely and thrive ,” he said . have to worry about predicting the future to buy or lease storage years in advance .”
Server optimisation
With CIOs being urged to optimise their server and network infrastructure to maximise their enterprise storage deployments understanding how best to enhance their storage , compute and network resources is far critical now than in the past .
Kanafani pointed out that that with the support of On-Command Insight for the on-prem infrastructure or On- Cloud Insight for cloud- based operation , NetApp is showing CIOs how they can optimise their environment on the storage layer , compute and networking as well . “ Intelligent executive dashboards are created to provide real-time insights that identify the inefficiencies of the infrastructure , potential areas of failure and bottlenecks ,” he said . “ Additionally , NetApp Spot , is capable of cost savings of up to 90 % on the storage and compute resources that are being consumed in the cloud . I think this would be a welcome optimisation capability that they can employ fairly quickly .”
Antoine Harb , Team Leader , Middle East and North Africa , Kingston Technology
Mouteih Chaghlil , CEO , Middle East and Africa ( MEA ), Bespin Global , said the main three features that favour adopting cloud as opposed to other storage forms , as well as ensuring that it is the future of enterprise storage focus on the technology ’ s unlimited capabilities which allows infinite customisation , the availability of pay-asyou-go models and the multi-tier security measures that could be applied . “ Unlike the on-premises offerings , cloud storage provides users the ability to pick and choose the capacity they need from the cloud storage services , with no high CAPEX and great speed , availability , security and high performance ,” he said .
Assaad El Saadi , Regional Director – Middle East , Pure Storage , said there is no doubt that cloud storage is the future of enterprise storage . “ The user economy is gaining ground in all traditional IT infrastructure areas and the benefits are clear . You ’ re no longer purchasing anything ; you ’ re consuming a service ,” he noted . “ Research shows that many CIOs feel consumptionbased models significantly accelerate Digital Transformation due to the transparency and agility to repurpose capital to address business demand . To future-proof storage infrastructure , organisations will need flexible consumption of file , block and object storage for on-prem or the cloud . The premise is simple – if you pay only for what you need , you don ’ t
At IBM , El Kordy believes that there has been significant advancements in storage technologies over the last decade or so . “ First , software defined storage ( SDS ) transformed the way storage used to be consumed and analytics-based insights into the storage area networks ( SAN ) and Storage infrastructures helped organisations
IN TODAY ’ S WORLD , CIOS ARE GIVEN A BROADER
REMIT THAN THEY HAD BEFORE AND ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING
A LEADING ROLE IN
DIRECTING BUSINESSES ’ TECHNOLOGIES TO ENSURE OPTIMISING DATA STORAGE
FOR THEIR ENTERPRISE .
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