Storage is one of the cornerstones to the infrastructure foundation companies work so hard to build. But enterprises storage options now stretch far beyond traditionally used hard drives and tape drives and extend to virtualized environments on shared storage and cloud services where data is hosted entirely off-site. With so many choices, it can be difficult to narrow down which types of solutions fit certain use cases.
Mark Peters, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group (www.esgglobal.com), says it all starts with cost because “if all storage was the same price, you’d put it all on main memory or solid state and be done with it.” But that’s not how the business world works, and companies have to be concerned with their budgets and bottom lines.