As we’ve been working with clients and interfacing with Cloud vendors over the last four months it has become readily apparent that there are key challenges for Cloud storage adoption that keep bubbling to the surface. I thought it would be helpful to list some of those issues below along with some potential solutions for these issues.
Security – Compliance and legal issues exist on the chain of custody of data as well as security/integrity of data stored outside the “four walls” of a business environment. Cloud SAS 70 certification is important for the Cloud vendor as it aligns with compliance and regulatory requirements. It is also important to encrypt data in advance of sending to the Cloud such that data is encrypted “in flight” and “at rest” and that chain of custody on encryption keys is maintained by the customer. You should insure that your Cloud vendor supports encryption – both SSL as well as AES256.
Availability – There continues to be concern about the availability of data when requested. Using two Clouds to store data simultaneously can alleviate these issues. If one Cloud vendor is unavailable at any time the other vendor should be available to access your data (the odds of two vendors being down simultaneously is extremely unlikely). I call this ”CloudRAID”. Typical costs of storing tier 3 data, as an example, in an enterprise is between $1.25 and $1.75 per GB/month. By storing data on two Clouds at $.15 per GB/month per Cloud vendor you can still have significant economic advantage of using the Cloud vs. traditional enterprise storage while dramatically increasing your availability.
Vendor lock in – Concern exists with storing data in a single vendor Cloud as it potentially locks in the customer and creates too much pricing power on behalf of the Cloud vendor. As discussed above, storing data in two Clouds simultaneously not only helps availability but can also prevent vendor lock in and give the customer easy switching costs.
Public WAN/Internet and data transfers - The dirty secret of the Cloud is the challenge of moving data in and out of a Cloud operator over the Internet in a high speed and efficient manner. Has anyone ever tried to move a TB of data over the Internet to your favorite Cloud provider? This is a key challenge that must be solved in order to unlock Cloud promises as companies are used to using private dedicated lines within their own corporate environments. Dedicated private connections significantly lower the economic benefits of using the Cloud. Emerging public WAN optimization/acceleration technologies/services will be key to solving these issues and fully unlocking the economic benefits of using the Cloud. For full disclosure, I recently became Chairman of a company called Asankya which is addressing the above public WAN issues.
Posted by Patrick Harr 
