Channel Chiefs Advise On Moving Data To The Cloud

It may seem like everything has moved to the cloud. But at a recentCRN Roundtablewith storage experts and channel chiefs essentially said, "Not so fast." The question of whether or not to move data to the cloud is a tricky one.

’There isn’t one simple answer, and what seemed to make sense three or four years ago, in many cased because it was all that was available, now no longer makes sense because more technology becomes available,’ said Dell's Frank Vitagliano

EMC's Gregg Ambulos broke down the priorities to be considered in the decision.

’It’s all about cost, it’s all about agility and speed, taking costs out of the system,’ he said.

NetApp's Bill Lipsin agreed on that front.

’The cost of storing data on the cloud may be prohibitive compared to using a hybrid cloud model,’ he said.

However, other considerations weigh heavily as well.

’You want to control your data, you want to own that and make sure that you can move it where you want it at any point in time,’ he added.

HPE's Jeremiah Jenson said that while it can be a complicated decision to move data to the cloud, ultimately, customers crave simplicity.

’It’s no longer OK to have multiple competing infrastructures. You need to have a strategy that is consistent and delivers the right workload on the right platform at the correct time, whether that’s cloud or whether that’s software-defined,’ he said.