Well before the Covid-19 pandemic, organisations of all sizes had begun a journey to the cloud. Whether looking for improved business continuity, innovation or cost efficiency, we all had similar reasons to explore cloud usage - either with a single vendor or multiple. In this blog, we focus on the growing requirement of cloud-enabled storage infrastructure for the modern data centre and how it is consumed.
Experiencing the pandemic first hand has made us all realise that not one thing or person has to exist in its fixed location - flexibility is key - complete a task in the best possible and most appropriate environment.
Hand in hand with 'cloud' usage is 'As-A-Serice' consumption, it is how we all procure and utilise the technology, very much like a mobile phone on PAYG, and while employees at nearly 100% of businesses use some type of cloud-based Software-as-as-Service, it is estimated during 2020 the industry reached a half-way mark with 50% of IT organisations using enterprise-class Storage-as-a-Service - this is where the expert team at COOLSPIRiT, along with Pure Storage can help organisations realise the flexibility their data and employees require.
The terms hybrid and multi-cloud are now the new normal for IT teams, with exploding volumes of data sprawling across multiple clouds, on-premises, IoT networks, social and mobile applications. The hybrid-cloud strategies which IT teams look to implement and follow don’t guarantee success unless they're built on a robust data foundation from the ground-up - this is where deep research has to be completed by organisations, which IDC have recently also reported - 'the adoption of as-a-service models continues to accelerate as organisations seek new consumption models that offer flexibility, agility, and transparency around usage'.
As mentioned earlier, the pandemic has made us all experience similar challenges and this is no different to the challenges we face when selecting the correct hybrid-cloud model - many organisations are trying to overcome the same (or very similar) hurdles, which include:
- Determining the right cloud service for the job
- Integration of cloud services/integrating them
- Multiple portals
- Cloud skills gap
- Migration/moving data to and from the cloud
- Compliance
- Controlling costs
Once an organisation has defined what their challenges are, IT teams then need to be decide what their organisation requires from a Storage-as-a-Service platform. Some example use case and requirements are:
- Disaster recovery: Cloud economics, automation, data replication, and recovery orchestration have made DR to the cloud ideal, especially if you’re operating from a single physical site.
- DevTest: Instantly provision clones of production workloads in the cloud to accelerate development cycles and expand your testing capabilities.
- Cloud migration: Migration of existing applications during cloud transformation. With the ability to redesign applications to work around availability vulnerabilities arising from a single point of failure
- High availability: Support continuous uptime, improved agility, and decrease costs. HA and resiliency capable within an AZ or multi-regional AZs, with replicas staying synchronized with master data sets.
When you put these challenges and requirements together, a perfect answer to solve and deliver the correct outcome is public cloud - helping organisations consume the infrastructure how they need it, when they need it. Some key research statistics from IDC demonstrate that organisations truly recognise the benefits, including comments and plans through to 2024:
- 65% of organisations will modernise legacy systems with extensive new technology platform investments through 2023.
- 43% of organisations believe interest in as-a-service models will significantly or moderately increase because of the economic crisis.
- 45% of organisations consider data backup and recovery to be the most important service offered by as-a-service models.
- By 2024, over 50% of data centre infrastructure and 75% of infrastructure in edge locations will be consumed/operated via as-a-service models.
Lastly, it is found that IT teams are confident that public cloud will help them improve flexibility to move workloads and improve capacity planning, which is key to any project. When researching the market for As-a-service models, organisations require flexible arrangements in which the purchase of hardware, defined software, deployment, support, optimisation, and life-cycle management services are handled by one third-party vendor, under one contract.
So, how can technology from Pure Storage help
Now we have looked at why organisations are migrating to cloud-based functions for their data centre operations, let's look at what technologies and services are available to help you achieve your business goals and the flexibility to access data from anywhere required. Pure believe you should be able to move between cloud locations seamlessly and to help you do this they have created the 'multicloud' strategy.
Before we get further into details, let's understand what exactly the term multicloud means: a multicloud abstracts away the complexities of managing multiple cloud services from different cloud providers of the same type (i.e. public or private), by consolidating them into a single unified data plane.
You may also wonder what makes multicloud different to a standard hybrid-cloud approach - Although it may be tempting to use the two terms interchangeably, they’re not mutually exclusive. A multicloud architecture could involve the unification of two private clouds or two public clouds, but the moment you unify public and private cloud environments, you’re dealing with a hybrid-cloud architecture. A multicloud strategy can help you select the right tools and technologies needed to consolidate those cloud resources into a single cohesive interface for managing your cloud infrastructure.
By following Pure's multicloud strategy, you will gain access to the following benefits:
- Effortless data and app mobility
- Reduced vendor lock-in
- On-prem performance when you need it, Public cloud agility when you needs it
- Storage for data protection/testdev and much more
- Enable the use of optimal features, pick the features you want from AWS or Azure
- Spans clouds and gives a single unified experience
To review, with this strategy and its services you can consolidate your resources into a unified infrastructure across multiple clouds. Drive innovation and productivity while eliminating the complexity of operating siloed private and public cloud environments.
Now let's take a deeper look into the products that are part of this multicloud strategy. To help organisations meet their business goals, IT teams can take advantage of the below two key service offerings:
- Pure as-a-Service: An OPEX-based capacity model that enables you to pay for what you use and transfer licensing across clouds (public and private)
- Pure Cloud Block Store: A block storage platform in the public cloud
Together these solutions offer a simplified customer experience that helps organisations navigate their digital transformation journey with ease. Via the flexible subscription models, you can increase innovation and productivity while creating a modern data experience for employees.
Pure as-a-Service
This is a storage as-a-service (STaaS) platform that unifies on-premises and public cloud storage resources into a single data storage subscription that delivers a true hybrid cloud experience. It is designed to offer an industry-leading cloud experience, which means it’s easy to get in, easy to ramp-up, and easy to get out. A basic subscription requires only a simple EULA and every subscription comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Offers via a simple and transparent pricing model based on flat £/GiB rates for products and services, STaaS saves you money through operating expenditure (OPEX) agility - you only pay for the storage you need, when you need it.
Pure's STaaS delivers storage for any data centre and any workload. A one-year commitment to a subscription includes:
- A simple subscription for your block, file, and object storage needs
- Access to management tools for managing your hybrid cloud environment from a single dashboard
- 100% OPEX subscription model that allows you to pay only for what you use
Pure Cloud Block Store
Building on the company's ability to offer leading cloud services, Cloud Block Store (block storage that's stored in the cloud) delivers seamless data mobility, data protection, and a consistent experience - in AWS and now in Microsoft Azure.
This solution allows you to eliminate data silos with seamless data mobility across heterogeneous environments, promoting better collaboration. By offering a common data plane you can deliver a consistent user experience, on-premises with FlashArray and with AWS or Azure. For DevTest the solution offers the ability to make snapshots and clones in the cloud which means you don’t have to deploy new on-premises hardware for testing. Also, Cloud Block Store snapshots and clones consume negligible cloud storage, improving software time to market and TCO.
This storage brings the benefits of on-premises SANs to the cloud, which include:
- Software-defined with consistent data plane
- Efficient industry-leading data reduction
- Data mobility eliminates data silos
- Consistent UX with same APIs on-prem and in the cloud
- Data resiliency with high availability within and across availability zones
- Business continuity with synchronised data across availability zones
With this storage offering IT teams can achieve high availability with efficient, reliable replication. Maintain synchronisation between replicas and master data sets. Ultimately delivering continuous uptime, always-on encryption, regulatory compliance, and better TCO.
It is sure to say that with Pure's multicloud offerings your organisation and IT teams will be ready for whatever business requirement is thrown at them, now or in the future.
We hope you have found this blog useful and inspires you to make infrastructure changes that will deliver tangible business benefits. Flexible infrastructure methods used to deliver critical data to employees is a must for all organisations - being able to deliver data wherever, whenever, 100% of the time is of the utmost importance - and when it includes the management, storage and delivery of data, in a single strategy we believe this is a true industry-leading model.
If you would like to talk simply call our expert team on 01246 454 222 or email hello@coolspirit.co.uk
