BANGALORE, INDIA: Of late, a lot of hype have been building around the word 'Cloud' and the latest to come in the picture is 'cloud storage', also called storage-as-a-service (SaaS).

Here the word 'Cloud' has no relations whatsoever with weather or storm, but is used as a metaphor for the Internet.

Partly cloudy days ahead for cloud storage

Although Wikipedia is yet to define cloud storage, it is being listed as a category of cloud computing, which is defined as services that provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

Whereas, on the cloud storage front, the free encyclopedia goes at length listing various cloud storage solution providers.

The facilities that house cloud storage systems are called data centers. At its most basic level, a cloud storage system needs just one data server connected to the Internet. A client (e.g., a computer user subscribing to a cloud storage service) sends copy of files over the Internet to the data server, which then records the information.

Storage-as-a-Service: A precursor to cloud computing

When the client wishes to retrieve the information, he or she accesses the data server through a Web-based interface. The server then either sends the files back to the client or allows the client to access and manipulate the files on the server itself. (Source: Howstuffworks)

It all began in 2006, when Amazon launched its first Simple Storage Service (S3) platform for its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) computing environment.

Today there are several in the fray, such as Rackspace (CloudFS), EMC (Mozy Enterprise), Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Box.net, Flexiscale, Nirvanix, IBM (Smart Business Storage Cloud), Hitachi and many more.

However, the market is yet to arrive at a coalesce on defining it and as Dell puts it, “The cloud market is still cloudy.” 

Phil Gann, director, Storage Infrastructure and Business Continuity, APAC, Hitachi Data Systems, says, “Cloud computing is a very general term and it covers a lot of different things. If you talk to different organizations it will have variations on that on what they believe is going to be. In the end the market would determine what cloud computing is.”

The industry seems to be as confused as I was (and still am), when I set out to do this special, during which I got definitions galore.

The definitions varied, from cloud storage is a form of Internet computing, to online storage, to similar to cloud computing solutions and that it is also a form of software-as-a-service, a bit different though.

H Phalachandra, senior director, EMC India Center of Excellence (CoE), tries to puts it like this, “Today resources, which are dynamically scalable and virtualized, are made available and provided as a service on demand over the Internet.”

Cloud, old yet cloudy
The cloud marketspace is still in its evolving stages. Online storage is not a new phenomena. It is been there for sometime now. Cloud storage is not so new.

“Cloud computing or else online storage services have been there for some time and were being utilised by small businesses and individuals. Whereas, adoption among large enterprises is not so  prevailing today, but will grow as we go along,” Phalachandra says.

Market is still experimenting with the technology. However, that doesn't dampen the spirits of people who want to explore it and leverage it.

Over the next five years, IDC expects spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 and accounting for nine per cent of revenues in five key market segments. More importantly, spending on cloud computing will accelerate throughout the forecast period, capturing 25 per cent of IT spending growth in 2012 and nearly a third of growth the following year.

Alvin Kho, chief consultant, Asia Pacific, Dell India, says: “There is a definite buzz around cloud. Customers are looking at cloud as a solution to all their infrastructure problems.”

“I see a strong a strong demand to have cloud computing. But there is definitely a level of weariness about whether the company can deliver to the level that organizations want in the availability, security aspect,” Gann adds.

Whatsoever, why is there so much of buzz around this?

Read in the next story, what calls for cloud storage.

Cloud Storage: Why host your data over cloud?