Is there a place in the Cloud for storage?

As we get engaged more and more about cloud computing, we get asked a lot about putting the storage in the cloud. How do you make money from offering storage on the cloud? And every time I felt a deja vu moment.

Flashback ... to the early 2000s where there were storage service providers (SSP)sprouting everywhere. Each offering extension of storage of some form with SLAs, charging a certain price per Gigabyte. Then the dot-com crashed and suddenly these SSPs were almost wiped out, like the dinosaurs in the Jurassic era. Did any survived? I am not sure but it seems to be making a comeback disguised a cloud storage.

What changed? Here are a few possibilities that I can think of

• More reliable networks


• Multi-tenancy


• IP based Storage


• Application Integration (open standards API such as RESTful, SOAP)


• Virtualization


• Servers, Platforms and Applications on the Cloud

I am not going to delve into the details of the points I made but the key to this is greater integration at the servers, networks and applications level. In the past, there were no server virtualization and therefore, the customers subscribing to the SSPs must ensure greater integration of their servers and applications to the storage at the SSPs. Furthermore, most storage platforms in that era are usually single tenancy and probably used proprietary methods for integration. This made things difficult and inadvertently led to higher costs.

However, even as cloud computing matures, can a cloud provider just "sell" storage on its own? Can they make money with storage alone? The compelling reason many customers, especially the small-medium businesses (SMBs) are seriously considering the cloud services is cost. The price of the computing resource on the cloud must be attractive and if price/gigabyte is the key factor for consideration, the service provider must find ways to keep the price as low as possible to ensure customer's loyalty. And in the cloud, customer's loyalty is paper thin. Price is king.

Beside the price/gigabyte, the service provider must also think about value-add to the storage they are offering, either as a complementary or an optional feature.

I am no sage but I believe for one to make money with storage in the cloud is to build one as cheaply as possible. Use off-the-shelf component and reduce the consideration for branded stuff.

I know, I know ... I am killing the business model but I believe building cloud storage from scratch could be it. I had the opportunity to do some research and one company (or open source project) sticks out - Gluster. Go check it out. It might be worth its salt in the cloud.