Why Corporate Cloud Storage Doesn't Add Up

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia sees few business IT situations that could make good use of full cloud storage services, outside of startups. 'As IT continues in a zigzag path of figuring out what to do with this "cloud" stuff, it seems that some companies are getting ahead of themselves. In particular, the concept of outsourcing storage to a cloud provider puzzles me. I can see some benefits in other cloud services (though I still find the trust aspect difficult to reconcile), but full-on cloud storage offerings don't make sense outside of some rare circumstances.'"

we get approached all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a printing company... cloud storage companies call us all the time with the pitches. Then they ask .. "how much data are you currently backing up?" .. we say "around 38 terabyte's" .. they say .. "no .. we aren't asking what your archives are, we are asking what your daily backups are." we say "we back up once a week. our weekly backups are around 38 terabytes." Then they say "that is a little more than we can handle" so I ask "well what can you handle?" almost every one of them has said they generally look for companies that have between 500GB and 1TB of storage. I guess if you fit that spec, it would work.

Re:Private cloud

[PatPending]

Not to mention the wonderful PR side effect of the company being "green".

Yup. Here's a pull-quote from a 2/13/2012 Dell press release, "Dell Opens New Western Technology Center in Quincy, Washington":

"Dell is proud to be listed as one of the top Green IT companies in the world," stated Patrick Mooney, executive director, Dell Services. "Our efforts to optimize the Power Usage Effectiveness at our Western Technology Center appeals to customers who want to consider the impact to the environment when configuring their IT solutions and to our environmentally conscious team members who participate in green initiatives across Dell."

"Power Usage Effectiveness" was originally coined "Power Usage Kilowatt Effectiveness" until someone pointed out its acronym.