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#144 – Introduction to Storage as a Service

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This week, Chris and Martin chat to Gary Breder (Director of Cloud and Services Product Marketing) and Diane Clay (Sr Manager of Cloud and Services Product Marketing) from Hitachi Vantara about storage as a service. While we’ve had different consumption models in the past, does StaaS offer anything different?

Perhaps the key takeaway from this conversation is the use of service-based offerings as a way to financially engineer more attractive cost structures to businesses. The vendor shoulders the risk with the customer by putting resources on the floor with an expectation of usage at some point.

What’s also clear is that much of the responsibilities have to be set out in contract form. This sees the transfer of management tasks covering fault diagnosis and resolution as well as capacity planning being shifted to the vendor. All of these processes are wrapped in detailed service level agreements.

Storage, data protection or any other offering “as a Service” isn’t for every business. However, as new projects are implemented, this provides a decision point to look at whether service offerings can replace the traditional management practices most common today.

To find out more about Hitachi Vantara’s service offerings, log onto the Hitachi Vantara website and follow the links for Service Offerings and Products.

Elapsed Time: 00:38:46

Timeline

  • 00:00:00 – Intros
  • 00:01:30 – “as a service” models are gaining traction
  • 00:02:25 – Buy, lease (capex) and now opex
  • 00:05:00 – Traditional enterprises continue to self-manage
  • 00:06:30 – “as a service” could be used for new projects
  • 00:09:45 – However, on-prem and cloud are different consumption models
  • 00:11:55 – Storage vendors & customers need to share risk
  • 00:12:00 – Minimum purchases exist – not the same as public cloud
  • 00:15:00 – Traditional contracts just deferred the costs
  • 00:17:00 – Hitachi uses Smart Data Center to track usage
  • 00:18:30 – How does the “as a service” offering differ to purchased storage?
  • 00:22:00 – What, exactly, are the service level offerings?
  • 00:23:20 – But, what have I actually gained by on-premises as-a-service?
  • 00:25:55 – Where’s the dividing line between customer & vendor roles?
  • 00:28:45 – What happens when things go wrong?
  • 00:32:00 – What other services could vendors offer – data protection?
  • 00:35:00 – Is most of the “as a Service” simply financial re-engineering?
  • 00:36:55 – Wrap Up

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Guest Bios

Gary Breder, Director of Cloud and Services Product Marketing leads the transformation of Hitachi in the development, marketing and go to market of our outcome-based cloud and IoT solutions and managed services. What people like most are the compelling messages he creates, his passion for driving customer value and company efficiency, and his effectiveness as a company evangelist.

Diane Clay, Sr. Manager of Cloud and Services Product Marketing drives the development and introduction of Hitachi Vantara solutions and end-to-end offerings that drive tangible business outcomes for customers.  Diane has led many company transformations with focus on technology change, new business development models and enterprise-wide sales enablement. She has also supported many companies in expanding their markets with new products lines.

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