The amount of digital information organizations are generating and retaining continues to grow unabated. It was not that long ago that a few terabytes of storage in a data center was considered a massive amount. Today organizations store tens, hundreds or thousands of terabytes of data and there is no indication that the growth rate is going to slow. Much of this information must be kept for the long term. This challenges the IT organization; how can service levels be met while meeting regulatory, legal and business needs? How can it be cost effectively stored? A new solution has emerged to help address these questions; cloud storage. Proponents of cloud storage point to a number of benefits, among them is substantially lower cost than traditional on premise storage. User cost savings accrue by reducing the amount of hardware, software and storage management required. This is made possible through the use of ready-made cloud based storage infrastructure, thereby eliminating many of the storage costs and management tasks required to effectively manage a large and growing amount of information. However, understanding and comparing cloud storage costs can be a challenge. Sponsored by Fujifilm, this white paper presents a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) comparison between a leading cloud storage provider and the new Fujifilm Dternity Media Cloud service. It is based on a representative 250 TB use case that includes estimates of the amount of data to be stored and its activity level. While the leading cloud storage services are viewed by industry observers as very cost competitive, the Fujifilm Dternity solution provided an even greater TCO savings. It was estimated to be 34% less expensive over the five year analysis period and the hybrid on premise/ public cloud mixed solution was 47% less expensive. The paper can be found at: Cloud Storage Services TCO Report
- Bradley Johns