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How Software Storage Solutions Can Reduce Enterprise Costs?

Enterprises nowadays are constantly faced with a challenge of rapid explosion of data from all the macro trends such as; social media, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and big data. Many organizations are faced with snowballing technology requirements and are declining IT budgets that means doing more with less.

However, they are focusing on the wrong aspect and are reducing costs and budget incorrectly. What these organizations need is a storage solution that itself is cost-efficient enough so that there are no unnecessary budget cuts on the more important things. Such a solution is known to be software storage solutions.

Software Storage Solutions Can Change Everything

When it comes to reducing costs or budgets, storage is often the highest single line item that is drastically reduced. Enterprises believe that they don’t need much storage now and that storage is just storage, it won’t perform any other function other than storing data, whereas this is not the case

With software storage solutions such as, software-based SAN, enterprises can save their storage costs and, at the same time, do a lot more with their storage than to just use it for storing data.

This is because good software storage solutions from reliable vendors like StoneFly, offer so much more than just data storage. They are easily more scalable, flexible, highly available and cost-effective than traditional storage solutions.

One of the best things about software storage solutions is that these solutions can be deployed in conjunction with industry standard hardware, which avoids any possible vendor lock-in. This gives organizations the freedom to choose their hardware, from anywhere they like, ensuring that they always get the right hardware for their requirements, with the right price, of course. Democratizing the infrastructure in this way will deliver cost savings by 60%.

What Makes Software Storage Solutions So Cost-Effective?

One of the factors that make software storage solutions so cost-effective is scalability. As mentioned before, software storage solutions are really easy to scale and are highly scalable as well.

There is no need to spend enterprise money on getting another storage solution for more storage or performance. Enterprises can add more storage or performance when needed in the same software storage solution with ease by simply scaling up or scaling out (by adding expansion units and storage nodes respectively), to add more storage space or performance, and while also staying in the same namespace.

Other than this, there are no high initial startup charges and with good reliable vendors like StoneFly, there are also no hidden costs either. Enterprises only have to pay for the services they need, not for everything else. This way, they can save costs and can always get more services if they need in the future. This makes software storage solutions very cost efficient.

Conclusion

Software storage solutions are really helpful for the enterprise as they help in reducing the costs and offer many other benefits as well like scalability, high availability, flexibility and are highly reliable as well. All these attributes and more make software storage solutions an excellent choice for enterprise looking to do more with their data and to save costs.

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Traditional Storage Lifecycle Vs Software Storage Solutions Lifecycle

The adoption of software storage solutions is growing rapidly and with good reason as they offer many benefits and convenience for organizations that use them. However, there are some concerns about the lifecycle of software storage solutions that have users a bit worried and, in this article, we will address all of those concerns and compare the lifecycle of traditional storage and software storage solutions so that enterprises have a better idea of both.

Traditional Storage Lifecycle

The typical storage lifecycle in enterprises starts with a storage system that includes both hardware and of course, software. The profitability of the vendor depends sorely on getting the highest upfront costs of the storage system as possible, and the even more lucrative ongoing support, maintenance, licensing, and upgrade costs. These costs can be a lot if the enterprise does not have extensive knowledge about the system and even so, for small businesses who have limit budgets, this can be an issue.

Most storage vendors expect and actually want their customers to keep re-purchasing upgraded versions of the software and to scale the storage hardware, and over time expand to additional systems.

Another major profit center is support and maintenance. This may start out low but rise in subsequent years. At technology refresh time, many customers will simply go with the storage vendor they already have – whether it’s the best choice for their environment or not, however, this depends on a use case to use case.

Software Storage Solutions Lifecycle

As was the case with traditional storage, software storage solutions price considerations also start with startup and continue through the lifecycle.

Startup costs are less expensive as compared to traditional storage, with primary savings coming from buying commodity hardware over proprietary storage systems. Even when the IT admins invest in high-value storage, the cost of the hardware and the software storage solutions are considerably less than any traditional storage solutions such as enterprise software-defined SAN.

Over time, IT admin can separately upgrade or replace software and hardware instead of upgrading or replacing the entire storage system.

This is made possible thanks to the easy scalability capability of software storage solutions. IT admins can easily scale up to add more expansion units and also scale out and add more storage nodes. What this does is that if gives enterprises the added storage capacity and performance while also staying in the same namespace.

There is no chance of vendor-lock in and enterprises can easily ‘pull out’ whenever they feel the need to. They also pay for yearly or monthly subscriptions so this mitigates the risk of any long-term commitments, in case the enterprise wants to switch.

Conclusion

Software storage solutions lifecycle is far more cost-efficient and favorable for the enterprise as compared to the lifecycle of traditional storage solution. So, in conclusion, software storage solutions are a far better choice than any traditional storage solutions, especially if your IT environment is changing rapidly.