Open cloud storage is gradually making inroads in the enterprise. While it's been around for more than a decade, it began gaining traction with the rise of cost-effective, high-capacity HDDs, custom data center appliances and software such as OpenStack that is compatible with nearly any configuration. Organizations now have many options to chose from when building infrastructure that is interoperable and safe from vendor lock-in.
Swiftstack gives customers scalable, economical storage for private clouds
Software-defined storage gives companies particular flexibility because they can pair open source solutions with industry-standard hardware. For example, Swiftstack, a Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance partner, provides a decoupled controller and uses the OpenStack Swift object storage system to make it easier for customers to implement multi-tenant clouds.
The setup doesn't require any proprietary appliances, resulting in a highly economical solution for private clouds. Petabyte-scale storage can be had for as low as $0.01 GB per month, and customers benefit from SwiftStack's exclusive focus on object storage, rather than a combination of object, file and block management.
"SwiftStack is the only company leveraging OpenStack Swift as the engine for its product, the same engine that runs the world's largest storage clouds," stated SwiftStack CEO Joe Arnold, according to Enterprise Storage Forum. "While the largest organizations have the resources and teams to build their own product on open source, the majority do not, and they need an easy-to-use product so they can focus their energy on their unique offerings to their customers."
OpenStack could pick up steam in the enterprise by paving way to hybrid cloud
Moreover, OpenStack provides a way for businesses to build highly automated, scalable private clouds that approach public resource performance, except with more granular controls. In a piece for VentureBeat, Internap vice president Raj Dutt argued that there could be enterprise opportunities for OpenStack deployments, and that each one was a hybrid cloud waiting to happen.
If so, this prospect bodes well for companies that may start off with an open private cloud and then integrate public components as they attempt to scale operations. Former NASA CTO Chris Kemp has provocatively predicted that even public cloud leader Amazon Web Services will eventually support OpenStack APIs. While this scenario may not come to pass, it's apparent that companies are increasingly interested in interoperability and cost controls and that OpenStack could be a toolkit to achieve that.
In addition to high-profile interest from HP, IBM and Red Hat, OpenStack has benefited from successful large-scale deployments. Comcast runs its X1 service on OpenStack, and PayPal and Best Buy have both explored open solutions. Some companies, such as IO, have gone so far as to pair OpenStack with the hardware built in accordance with the Open Compute Project.
Subscribers to IO's data-center-as-a-service offerings can access the new IO.Cloud solution over Layer 2 and 3 connectivity. IO.Cloud runs on OpenStack and uses the Knox storage sleds and Winterfell servers designed by the Open Compute Project community. It will initially be available in the company's data centers in Phoenix, Ariz., and Edison, N.J. IO is banking on enterprise customers that want more transparency in how their infrastructure is managed, and it believes that OpenStack and OCP designs provide just that.
"The enterprise market is eager for a cloud solution that both addresses security and avoids expensive lock-in to proprietary architecture," stated IO CEO George Slessman, according to Data Center Knowledge. "Our solution achieves both. IO.Cloud is IT that enables rather than constrains, using visibility and software-defined intelligence to spur innovation, drive growth and contribute to business success."
