When a company begins its cloud journey, they often assume they need to move everything to one of the “big 3” (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Compute). Many organizations want to maintain control of their data and leverage only the cloud computing resources from the big 3. Also, an organization may like the operational expenditure (OPEX) only business model of the cloud but prefer to keep its data on-premises.
Leveraging Public Cloud computing makes sense. CPUs are easily scaled up and down, and the major cloud providers can deliver an almost unlimited amount of computing capacity to meet the organization’s needs. However, the value in hosting data in the public cloud is not as clear cut. First, data has gravity, and the large cloud providers charge for that gravity in the form of storage and egress charges.
Second, data can’t quickly scale down; in most cases, organizations have a steady increase in capacity demands. Third, data has sovereignty. Many countries and regulating bodies have passed precise laws about where data can and can’t be stored. Finally, cloud storage is fundamentally different. Cloud storage does not always implement block and file storage protocols in the same way as on-premises storage.
There are options for IT professionals looking for a way to either leverage cloud compute, but maintain control of the data asset, or to take advantage of the cloud OPEX model. IT planners can work with providers that enable the hosting of storage resources in a directly connected data center so that the large cloud provider’s computing resources have direct access to the organization’s storage assets. Also, some cloud providers deliver an OPEX only storage solution that the organization can use on-premises but pay for it just as if it was in the cloud.
Introducing Madison Cloud
Madison Cloud is a full-service private cloud storage provider. They provide managed on-premises and cloud connected private storage solution delivered via a pure OPEX model, or they can host the organization’s private cloud storage in one of their data centers. Each of these data centers has high-speed access to multiple larger cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Compute Platform and other cloud service providers.
Madison Cloud is building their private cloud storage offering around StorOne S1 software-defined storage solution. S1 enables Madison Cloud to leverage storage hardware resources more efficiently than even the major cloud providers. As a result, Madison Cloud can provide extremely cost-effective OPEX rates while still providing a level of customer support that is difficult to obtain from the larger providers.
Madison Cloud customers can have a cloud strategy that puts them in control of where they store data and how they implement security. The data is still accessible from public cloud computing resources but is never actually hosted in the public cloud; instead, it is safe and secure in the Madison Cloud private cloud.
A private cloud that has high-speed access to multiple cloud providers may also be the ultimate multi-cloud strategy. The typical multiple cloud strategy requires copying data from cloud to cloud or seeding multiple clouds simultaneously. The Madison Cloud approach means that data access does not have to migrate. Instead, the organization can point the various cloud providers’ compute stack at their private cloud storage whenever they need.
For organizations looking to keep both storage and compute on-premises but want to leverage the cloud’s OPEX model, Madison Cloud can deliver the same private cloud storage solution into the organization’s data center. The turnkey S1 solution can deliver a full range of storage services including extremely high-performance IOPS for databases and applications, cost-effective high performance for virtualized environments and even hybrid configuration to support archiving and data protection use cases.
StorageSwiss Take
A cloud strategy doesn’t always mean a “lift and shift” of data and applications to the cloud. Many organizations may want the ability to maintain control over their data assets. A private cloud solution like what Madison Cloud offers is ideal for those companies. The ability to leverage a OPEX model on-premises, yet still deliver the full range of storage services is ideal for companies looking to maintain a data center presence. For companies looking to downsize their data center presence, the capability to have private cloud storage that is accessible from multiple cloud vendors computing resources, brings maximum flexibility.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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