Storage as a Service: Buyer Preferences and Market Analysis An IDC Multiclient Study
Market Sector • Hardware
Research View • Infrastructure Hardware
Study Objective/Methodology:
Storage-as-a-service is becoming a viable alternative for enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, and individual customers who need to store digital data and would prefer to procure storage services and storage capacity as a hosted service rather than as an onsite product or set of products. This way of accessing storage capacity and services such as backup, archiving, replication, etc is being driven by the enormous growth in the creation of digital data, by businesses as well as consumers, often in the form of unstructured data files such as e-mail, photos, videos, music, and other Web 2.0 content. Businesses also are under increasing pressure to meet regulatory compliance requirements, as well as manage litigation risk, and using a storage service can provide assurance that they are meeting requirements and will have enough capacity to account for future growth. Small and medium-sized businesses also look at storage-as-a-service as a way of enabling a disaster recovery strategy, when they do not have their own multiple data centers for data backup, replication and archiving purposes.
Client Value:
Characterize and segment current storage-as-a-service offerings
Identify tipping points for customer spending on storage-as-a-service offerings
Analyze customer requirements by segment pertaining to service level agreements (SLAs), pricing, technology platform, and other elements of service delivery
Evaluate opportunities for storage OEMs to sell their technology into service provider companies
Size and forecast customer spending by market segment and workload for storage-as-a-service
Analyze which service providers are in the best position to capture significant market share
Identify key sales and marketing messages and market positioning for providers, by market segment
Identify and provide strategies to overcome barriers-to-entry in various market segments, regarding corporate policies, storage strategies, and direction regarding build-vs.-buy
Analyze the services opportunity pertaining to remote/branch office storage requirements
Analyze the impact of regulatory compliance on customer buying behavior in this market
Study Results Available:
May 2008
Analyst Team
Doug Chandler Research Director, Infrastructure Services
