Storage Technology Predictions for 2010 – What’s to Come

Andrew Martin, VP of APAC

For much of 2009, deduplication was the “buzz” technology in storage. We started seeing major adoption of deduplication across different business sectors and companies of varying sizes, from large enterprises down to SMEs, adopt the technology. In addition, we saw a move from deduplication specialist companies dominating the space to traditional storage and software companies (BakBone included) coming to market with their own deduplication offerings. Finally, we saw the soap-opera-like battle of two industry giants slugging it out to take control as the leading deduplication specialist, Data Domain.

So what’s going to be the storage buzz technology of 2010?

Unfortunately, I don’t see anything on the horizon about to explode into every IT department. I stand to be proved wrong, but I do not see a technology taking us by storm in 2010 in the way deduplication did last year.

Cloud storage is growing with many vendors aiming to get on the bandwagon, form alliances and drive IT departments toward their vision of how cloud should be adopted. However, I have spoken to many people about cloud storage: IT directors, government departments, analysts, journalists and systems integrators, and whilst cloud is becoming increasingly relevant, it seems that adoption of cloud based will still be steady with corporate companies, particularly experimenting with different providers to find out what, if anything, works for them.

Whilst cloud is going to continue to grow, my educated guess is that it won’t be the must-have storage technology of 2010.

I have seen one technology making a comeback – archiving. However, I don’t think we can refer to archiving as  something new; in fact, it is one of the oldest storage technologies around with HSM-type products being popular in the height of the mainframe days.

However, across Asia and beyond, many companies are expressing a renewed interest in spending money on archive and HSM-type products. This is not only for e-mail but also for applications like SharePoint and even for file-system data. In addition, we are seeing numerous startup companies come to market with new archive products. It is interesting to see startups cropping up in such an old arm of storage technology. However, these new companies are working on the next generation of archive technology. Products that understand and take advantage of server and storage virtualisation, that can classify data in many different ways and even build a repository of archived data that can be used for analysis by other applications. BakBone recently released NetVault: Archive in Europe (a “next-generation archive product”), and it has been fascinating to see the level of demand for us to launch this product in Asia.

For me, I wonder what the natural progression from archiving might be. I have wondered if there ever might be demand for a vendor to build a platform that can intelligently delete data; not secure deletion, there are many light utilities available that securely delete data. My vision is of a technology that can identify data based on strong preset criteria that can be permanently deleted without impacting compliance or inadvertently removing required/useful data.

We are always reluctant to simply delete data; however we know two things for a fact:

1 – The rate of data growth causes significant data management problems.

2 – We store and protect large volumes of data that we do not need and will never use again.

Deleting data sends a chill down the spine of most IT administrators and is something we just don’t do. The risk of deleting something critical outweighs the potential benefit of getting rid of the waste.

However, if intelligent file systems ever become a reality, then maybe a product that allows data to automatically be “thrown” into the waste bin could be in our future.

A Quick Look at Cloud Computing

Scott Wells

Ever since the early 1990s the information superhighway has helped collaboration among agencies and organizations evolve. Without this communication and data sharing, it would be nearly impossible to meet all the regulations, laws and standards set into place today. There are now countless services and applications that act as road signs along the superhighway, helping guide us toward our end result. As these services become more abundant, cloud computing has become a hot buzz word to describe the range of possibilities at our fingertips.     

The metaphor of the cloud to represent Internet-as-a-service has different meaning to various analysts and technology groups. Some narrowly define cloud computing as virtual services available over the Internet. Others consider anything outside the firewall as “in the cloud.” Regardless of the scope of the definition, cloud computing is any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that helps IT meet increasing needs without investing in new infrastructure, software or hardware.     

The following are several of the technologies that are encompassed by cloud computing:     

• Software as a service (SaaS): Offers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers (Salesforce.com)
• Utility computing: Offers storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand (Amazon.com)
• Web services: Helps developers create functionality over the Internet, rather than delivering full-blown applications (GoogleMaps)
• Platform as a service: Offers development environments as a service. Developers build applications that run on the providers infrastructure (Google App Engine)
• Managed service providers (MSP): An IT application, rather than an end user application (anti-spam service)

The storage industry is not immune to the changes cloud computing is ushering in. Cloud storage has the potential to lower costs, reduce capital investments and provide increased scalability as it becomes another viable tier of online storage. These benefits hold great appeal to both large and small enterprises as the economic downturn, shrinking IT budgets and reduced staffing put pressure on tech departments to cut costs while also storing and protecting growing mountains of data. However, storage in the cloud, or storage as a service, has its own set of potential issues around performance. Specifically, for applications that require a large amount of data that needs to be accessed instantly, it might still be faster to use physical storage located within the traditional IT data center.     

However, with such an impressive resume of capabilities, it is hard to understand why everyone wouldn’t jump onto the cloud computing bandwagon. There are a couple reasons that immediately stand out. When you consider the amount of control a company forfeits by moving data and operations to the cloud, the risks become clear. Legal documents, intellectual property and other crucial company data are not easily transitioned into applications that are not located directly on a company’s server due to the risk of theft or accidental misappropriation. Also adding to the mix is the risk of down time. If the Internet goes down, a company’s employees are left without the tools they need to continue daily operations.     

Despite these concerns, it is easy to envision a future that has most daily operations taking place in the cloud. Gartner has predicted cloud computing will grow from $46 billion a year to $150 billion by 2013. Corporate IT departments are increasingly drawn in to the benefits and time-saving, budget-reducing aspects that are undeniable. Also, as technology evolves, many of the above concerns are diminished. For instance, many Web applications are now developed with an offline component that enables users to continue working when there is an Internet outage. Little by little, the concerns of cloud computing and the hiccups involved with many of its components are replaced by the benefits.     

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Sun, IBM and other leading technology vendors already offer cloud service capabilities. Amazon invited students, educators and researchers to apply for grants that would give them free access to the company’s hosted computing services. At Microsoft’s Management Summit 2009, the company’s main focus was around the virtualized environments of tomorrow’s datacenters and how mobile devices will connect to the cloud.     

Here at BakBone, we are looking at ways to incorporate our technologies into these new cloud architectures. One way we can leverage the cloud is by ensuring our products are cloud friendly so customers can use the cloud as just another choice of backup media or online disk storage with immediate off-site flexibility. As we all fly down the information highway, looking to follow the road signs, it is encouraging to see the new possibilities. However, it is also important to continually check these technologies for the security and reliability necessary to sustain the trip. If cloud computing delivers what many are projecting and finds solutions to security and privacy issues, it could very well be the way of the future.

What to Consider When Evaluating Cloud-Based Backup

Andrew Martin

We are seeing a lot of “buzz” around cloud and backup to the cloud. Vendors, analysts and journalists are discussing it. BakBone is finding that the topic is becoming more common place in everyday discussions about data protection.

Issues to consider when thinking about moving data protection out to the cloud:

1 – Complexity does not go away. Protecting an application such as messaging or databases is no less complex simply because the data is being sent out to the cloud. To ensure you get the protection and recovery SLAs your business needs, you still need to work with companies that understand the intricacies of application data protection. In most cases, providers of cloud-based storage capacity will not have the skills or experience in this area. For business data protection, working with a traditional expert in this field that has links to a cloud provider will make most sense.

2 – Who is the provider of the cloud-based infrastructure? This is a key part of your decision. Do they have resources that are secure enough for your business critical data? What data protection strategy do they have in place in their infrastructure? Is the operation too big to respond to individual issues if and when things go wrong? Large corporate providers such as Amazon storage may be suitable, but if your data is highly secure then you must seriously consider whether these providers will give the level of security you require.

3 – Protection is one thing, but recoverability is also vital. Testing a service to establish exactly how quickly data can be recovered in the event of data loss on your primary systems is vital. Not all providers will be the same in this respect and it is important that this is taken into consideration.

4 – How much control do you want to turn over to the cloud based provider? Do you want to outsource the entire data protection function to them or do you simply want a cloud-based repository where you can send your data to? If it is the latter, not much changes other than you reduce backup hardware requirements on your production site. If it is the former then the level of investigation into the provider, their skills and experience becomes critical.