Debunking 3 cloud storage myths

22nd January 2017
Debunking 3 cloud storage myths

It’s a perennial challenge. Enterprise storage requirements seem to be always growing like Jack’s beanstalk. That’s why IT teams are increasingly turning toward Cloud Storage to address this challenge. Research firm Markets and Markets substantiates that the cloud storage market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.2%, from  $18.87 billion in 2015 to  $65.41 billion by 2020.
 Nitin Mishra, Senior Vice President, Product Management , Netmagic Solutions, addresses  three myths about cloud storage
|January 22 2017: Ironically, while the cloud wave is taking the enterprise space by storm, popular and oft-repeated cloud storage myths continue to linger. Let’s debunk three of most common myths about cloud storage and help understand the domain better.

Myth 1: On-premise IT is more secure than Cloud Storage
An overwhelming number of IT executive remain apprehensive of the security aspects of cloud storage. Many prefer to dwell on the “What ifs.” There are apprehension, anxiety, and concern about the security implications of cloud services which are considered to be ‘inherently insecure.’
Little do they realize that most breaches involve on premise data center environments. The number of security breaches in the public cloud has been far too few. The foremost security challenge with on premise storage ecosystems is the lack of adhering to industry security standards. Rarely local storage is encrypted. And even if it is, then it isn’t unlikely to find the encryption keys stored conveniently in the same location.
Inherently separating the encrypted data from its decryption source, cloud storage ensures that data is encrypted at host and the business stores keys on its local network, thereby being far more secure than on premise storage.

Myth 2: Cloud complicates architecture
On the contrary, the cloud offers resources and dashboards to allow IT managers have an easy interface to seamlessly manage scale up and down of  infrastructure. They can add, reallocate or move storage within minutes without having to purchase equipment, locating physical space or waiting for days at the end for the provisioning to happen. Thus cloud actually makes it easier to manage the architecture.

Myth 3: IT suffers from incurable vendor lock-in headaches
A certain Wakefield Research claims 78% of IT decision makers believe vendor lock-in concerns keep their organizations from realizing maximum benefits of cloud resources. It means that most of IT leaders choose not to fully invest in the cloud as they arguably value long-term vendor flexibility more over the benefits one accrues with the cloud. While the fear of vendor lock-in is legitimate with some providers, quite a few cloud storage solution providers offer robust data migration services to ease the migration of large amounts of data.
Obviously, enterprises should definitely read the fine print and ensure that the cloud vendors either support emerging industry standards such as Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) or integrate with several cloud storage APIs to offer a standard file system interface that allows seamless migration. Intelligent cloud management layer also helps IT teams manage their cloud storage ecosystem better. As the market matures and more open initiatives take over, the concerns about data and vendor lock-in will fade away.