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There are countless storage, backup, and data protection applications currently in existence. With each passing month, more are released.
Occasionally, there is a groundbreaking software development that changes the face of storage. Perhaps the primary target of storage software application development right now, though, is managing and monitoring the cost of cloud storage.
People moved to the cloud with the idea that they would save a lot of money by switching from CapEx to OpEx: No more three-year hardware refreshes. No more having to manage, monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot all that gear. No more late nights and long weekends dealing with the latest catastrophe. And all that spare money to spend on business-related IT instead of the eternal task of staying on top of the underlying storage plumbing.
It didn’t work out quite as expected. Costs have risen across the board as more apps migrated to the cloud, more data was sent there, multicloud environments emerged, and complexity multiplied.
Here are some of the top predictions in the storage software market for 2023:
1. Storage Growth Drives Need for Cost-Cutting Tools
David McNerney, senior product manager cloud at Virtana, said that hybrid cloud storage consumption is growing and cost-cutting tools are not there yet.
Currently, most tools focus on compute storage, which leaves organizations with soaring cloud storage costs that are growing at a faster rate than overall cloud spend.
“In 2023, organizations we’ve heard from will be looking to expand their cost-cutting measures from compute to storage,” McNerney said.
See more: 5 Top Cloud Storage Trends
2. Too Much Cloud Spend is the New Reality
Veritas Technologies released research revealing 94% of enterprises incurred higher costs than originally anticipated when using a public cloud service provider (CSP).
They are surpassing their allocated cloud budgets by an average of 43%.
These shocking statistics make it clear that cloud costs are and likely will continue to be out of control.
See more: Public Cloud Market Poised to Pass $1 Trillion by 2026
3. Who’s Controlling My Costs? I Thought You Were
The Veritas study delved into why costs have risen so sharply. The answer appears to be collective irresponsibility.
While 100% of respondents agreed that using CSPs provides benefits to an organization, like flexibility, scalability, and mobility, many don’t fully understand their responsibility in the cloud, leading to overages.
Within organizations, line of business heads, developers, and just about anybody can incur cloud costs. Cloud procurement remains largely the Wild West. Organizations send data to the cloud and don’t read the fine print about what all the different things cost. They see X cents per amount of data stored and believe that is the end of it. But how about networking costs, retrieval costs, and the other line items that might be present.
Few take the time to carefully work out what the cloud is really costing them. According to Veritas, 99% of respondents believed that their CSP would be responsible for protecting some of their assets in the cloud, while in reality, organizations are responsible for the security of their data and applications in the cloud, and CSPs are responsible for the resiliency of the cloud.
2023 will see accountability become more commonplace.
See more: Cloud Pricing
4. Cloud Cost Management Emerges
Thus, cost and resource optimization are going to be key for 2023.
Considering the potential economic uncertainty, most companies want to have detailed insights into their cloud spend and the ability to control the spend and optimize their resource utilization.
Driven by the digital transformation over the last few years, companies have adopted multiple clouds based on their individual business needs. As a result, most companies have very little insight about spend, the correlation with business applications, and potential cost-savings possibilities.
“As organizations start to drive towards cloud adoption maturity that is coupled with business pressure on reduced spend, the companies who have a proactive approach will have a significant upper hand in dealing with uncertainty,” said Amit Rathi, VP of engineering, Virtana.
See more: 9 Cloud Cost Optimization Best Practices
5. Cloud Insecurity Needs Software Support
Beyond cloud costs, the other big area requiring software attention is cybersecurity.
According to Veritas, 89% of respondents said their organizations experienced a ransomware attack on their cloud environment. Without adequate protection, this can result in unexpected spend.
In addition, 53% of organizations lost data as a result of relying solely on the backup tools of their CSP, and 40% of respondents cite backup and recovery as the leading area of overspend; 76% of respondents agreed that current offerings from CSPs fall short of their organization’s security needs.
“No one is going to budget for something that they think they’re getting for free,” said Sonya Duffin, data control evangelist, Veritas.
“By the time that IT leaders realize that there’s something that they’ve overlooked, it’s common that they’ve already lost data. Therefore, if they want to avoid asking for additional budget to cover a project overspend, it’s critical to factor in data protection and take back control, right from the start.”
See more: Cloud Storage Security Best Practices
