Gartner recently revised their definition of cloud computing changing the phrase “massively scalable” to “scalable and elastic”. This is an important revision that reflects how companies want to use cloud services. In the context of archiving data to the cloud, organizations clearly need to be able to scale up their storage requirements as increasing volumes of data are generated and must be archived. However, these same organizations recognize that while they need access to historical data, it will be relatively infrequent and unpredictable so they don’t want to be paying for dedicated, always on servers.
As such, it’s worth highlighting that cloud-based data retention solutions powered by RainStor are actually a very good example of Gartner’s “scalable and elastic” definition of cloud computing: we’re able to provide on demand and unlimited access to data as we leverage the highly elastic nature of the cloud scaling up and out over instances as required to support customers analyzing data whenever they want.
Furthermore, when you combine the ability to share services with the elastic nature of cloud, both service providers and their customers can really take advantage of the economics of cloud computing. Outlining how RainStor delivers multi-tenancy in the cloud securely is a topic for a future post….