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To STaaS or not to STaaS?

On-premise Storage as a Service (STaaS) is a relatively new phenomena. What makes it different than public Cloud STaaS, if anything, and when does it make sense to deploy it?

Why On-Premise STaaS?

Unlike Cloud STaaS, even businesses without rapid growth can benefit from on-premise STaaS. Many companies will find value in the unique benefits STaaS has to offer, such as:

• Capital savings -- becomes more important as interest rates go higher and the economy weakens.
• Storage personnel savings--IBM takes care of break/fix operations which reduces employee burn out. For companies in a tight job market this is a key benefit.
• Seasonal savings--seasonal storage demand is difficult to estimate and often reserved capacity errs on the conservative and therefore expensive side.
• Service/ContractorSavings--commonly directly correlated with hardware and software storage expenditures. STaaS can reduce these costs substantially.
• Capacity Planning Savings--capacity planning is complex and time consuming particularly for fast growing companies or ones with substantial seasonal demand.
• Time to Market Savings--the time to get a new business initiative functioning often places IT in the position of scrambling to acquire and allocate new storage capacity.
• Technology Refresh/Procurement Savings--the number of people and departments that have to sign-off on a new storage purchase can be daunting. It is much easier and quicker to get sign-off on a subscription model.
• Over-Provisioning Savings--buying all capacity upfront avoids the hassle and delay of annual purchase approvals, but it has a downside of higher costs and lower utilization rates.