The rush to cloud has experienced a bit of a backlash, as organizations realize that it’s become too complex to port their legacy business apps to the cloud, plus companies overspent on cloud apps, and storage apps cost too much money to run in the cloud – and often don’t deliver the required performance.
Scott Sinclair, a practice director at Tech Target’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), points out that in recent research, ESG found that 91% of IT managers say the combination of on-premises data centers with modernization tools such as Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) delivers a strategic advantage to their businesses.
“Even the cloud-first organizations we talked to said that the future lies with a hybrid cloud,” says Sinclair. “In some circles this is called repatriation, but a better word for it is a ‘rebalancing’ of the data center.”
Businesses Look to Their IT Advisors
Albert Gammer, director at the Australia-based managed service provider Gammer Group, adds that many of his customers tell him that they want his team to help them identify which cloud apps make sense to keep and then modernize their data centers with STaaS.
“People also like that as the systems integrator we can do much of the work remotely, the customer doesn’t have to add people internally,” adds Gammer.
Three Benefits You Can Bring To Your Customers
Based on ESG research, there are at least three benefits MSPs can bring to their customers by modernizing the data center with STaaS:
- Agility and speed: Fifty-two percent say modernization with STaaS accelerated the company’s IT initiatives by freeing up personnel for higher value tasks. They can now work on security projects, launch new business apps that grow the business, or develop business intelligence that helps identify new markets.
- Cost optimization: STaaS offers the benefits of the cloud, for example, a pay-for-use format, which saves money on storage, as well as savings on hiring additional administrators. Forty-six percent of IT managers surveyed by ESG say they can allocate these savings into future budget quarters, money they can spend on IT projects that focus more on growing the business.
- Improved experience for employees: Forty-six percent of IT managers say modernizing the data center with STaaS improved the overall work experience for their employees. The staff now works on higher-level IT projects versus manual storage issues – and many are happier with their jobs.
“As busy as everyone is today nobody has the time to manage a spindle on a storage system,” says Glen Lomond, global partner solutioneer and strategist at Hitachi Vantara. “Infrastructure is boring and nobody wants to think about it, they just want it to work. Well, we’ve solved that problem.”
Watch this webcast to learn more about modernizing on-premises infrastructure with STaaS.