What is storage as a service (STaaS)?

2 concerns motivated the creation of STaaS: 

1. To make powerful storage tools available to organizations of all sizes and operating budgets.
2. To deliver these resources in a cost-effective way that negates the need to purchase cost-prohibitive tools.

STaaS was initially developed as a lower-cost alternative, especially for small- and medium-sized companies that didn’t have sufficient budgets to fund all their cloud storage costs and manage all their data storage needs. Now, organizations of all sizes can and do employ STaaS methods.

The tech companies that operate the third-party data storage platforms that offer STaaS services are called cloud service providers (CSPs).

Three types of storage dominate the field of data storage and any discussion of STaaS:

• Block storage: In block storage, information is split up into individual blocks of data for use in cloud environments and other kinds of storage. Block storage tends to be more expensive than other storage formats, although it does feature quick data access. It also offers functionality similar to writing data to stand-alone systems.

• File storage: File storage is the type of data storage most commonly found on PCs, using file directories as indexes of alphabetically listed files. File storage provides the least scalable storage, and the file directory can become more difficult to navigate as it becomes increasingly overloaded with files.

• Object storage: Object storage is the most preferred storage format for application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices—with the highest levels of scalability. Raw data workloads are optimized with metadata, which makes information easier to access.

The formal relationship between an organization and a CSP providing the storage as a service (STaaS) begins with the drafting of service level agreements (SLAs). These contractual documents legally bind an organization to service providers, lock in the pricing involved and establish other variables related to the managed service (such as storage capacity, cost-per-gigabyte-stored and cost-per-data-transfer).

Discussions of STaaS are often based on perceived differences between “cold” data and “hot” data. Cold data is considered to have little immediate importance, while hot data is information that is thought to be in active use and therefore, is considered important.

The obvious analogy here is with food. Hot data is like hot food. It needs to be served up quickly, so its storage solution must be able to provide a modicum of flexibility to enable this prompt service. Hot data remains on the table, ready to be served. Cold data is more like leftovers, formerly hot food that needs to be safely maintained through refrigeration. Cold data goes into cold storage. And for data that you might or might not ever get around to reheating, there’s always the freezer.

Granted, such hot/cold distinctions are entirely subjective. It’s also worth noting that much (and perhaps even most) data experiences drastic temperature changes during their lifecycle. Nonetheless, prioritizing data by their anticipated present and future needs is one way to go about providing triage for information—divvying up data by its presumed temperature.

An alternative pricing model is based purely on cost efficiency. Although the cost-efficient model will almost always provide the cheapest overall costs, there’s a catch, in the form of limited access or subpar performance. Why? Because the cost-efficient model is priced to accommodate cold data only. If the data in question is information your organization is likely to need and use often, you might be better advised to find another storage method.

The temperature of data also becomes very important to help ensure smooth data storage services. For data of higher temperature (and importance), the SLAs in place become especially critical. This is where matters like access speeds and projected uptimes are stated plainly and where a company should learn if its data storage needs are similar with its CSP.

Organizations like the convenience of storage as a service (STaaS) and the way that it manages storage operations, even as storage needs continue to escalate. The following are some of the benefits that STaaS can provide:

• Cut infrastructure costs: STaaS frees up company budgets by eliminating the need for extensive cloud infrastructure costs. Because organizations are getting the storage services they need by subscription, the question of infrastructure investments can largely be avoided.

• Simplify scaling: IT departments can tie themselves into knots trying to keep pace with their organization’s growing storage needs. Users of STaaS can bypass such headaches. The real-time handling of STaaS scaling operations occurs automatically, regardless of which apps are being used and whatever performance levels are required. 

• Retain flexibility: STaaS subscribers gain true scalability because STaaS adapts to shifting market demands by seamlessly integrating automation into its various processes. By making scalability automatic, there’s no need to schedule server upgrades or periods of equipment maintenance. All of that can be considered automatically.

• Strengthen and preserve data: Storage management is not just about moving data to more advantageous processing locations. It’s also important that data be enhanced with as much security as possible, and that its durability is increased in a protective and ongoing manner. STaaS works to make sure that data remains strong and resilient.

• Reduce latency: Time is literally money when it comes to the performance problems that result in latency issues. Precious online sales revenues can be negatively impacted or in some cases, lost altogether due to latency. STaaS helps organizations get a handle on performance problems by using early issue detection to help stop them before they become major ordeals.

• Encourage transformation: Storage management is not considered a higher cloud computing function, but it still must be maintained for proper IT functionality. However, if storage management becomes the responsibility of a service provider, as it does in STaaS relationships, that mental energy can be applied instead to digital transformation efforts.

It’s ironic that the same thing that enables STaaS—cloud computing—is also responsible for some negative aspects of using STaaS:

• Security concerns: The point of STaaS is to free companies of the tedious tasks related to data management and ease storage concerns by transferring data to the cloud. But that means that data is only as secure as the cloud hosting it. For organizations that want to relocate mission-critical data, they need to be confident that the cloud services being used are secure.

• Overage penalties: The relationship spelled out in SLAs assures organizations of the level of service that will be provided. However, depending on the service provider, the SLA can also impose costly fines if companies exceed their allotted bandwidth usage. That’s why it’s essential that organizations try to realistically assess and even forecast their future storage needs.

• Limited availability: A popular belief often held by organizations is that large tech companies are relatively immune to the effects of latency or other service disruptions. While this might be true to a degree (due to the extra infrastructure protections CSPs can enact by virtue of their size and technological power), all service providers are subject to limited availability due to technical problems or downtime caused by cyberthreats.

STaaS has demonstrated considerable utility in numerous activities related to data protection and preservation, including the following use cases:

• Storage of raw data for data archiving purposes

• File-sharing systems for smooth data transfer

• Cloud platform hosting applications

• Replacement of disk(s)

• Extract, load and transform (ETL) pipelines

• Data management systems

• Long-term data backup to strengthen data security

• Database management systems

• Ransomware recovery of critical data to prevent data loss and downtime

• Disaster recovery measures to help ensure high availability of data

Three major technology companies are the biggest suppliers of STaaS services. According to February 2024 statistics from Synergy Research Group, they combine to command roughly two-thirds of the global cloud infrastructure market:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): AWS leads all contenders with an impressive 34% market share and offers over 200 cloud-based services for a wide variety of industrial and technical applications. Its product line includes an object storage service that enables the use of data lakes (centralized repositories built to warehouse both structured and unstructured data).

• Microsoft Azure: Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform ranks second in terms of market share (23%) among CSPs. Like competitor AWS, the Azure suite is broad, with over 200 products and services. Azure Storage features numerous services expressly designed for data storage—perhaps none more popular than Azure Storage blobs. Blobs, which are files, accept data from many sources.

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Placing third among CSPs, Google’s 2023 market share was assessed at around 10%. STaaS offerings from GCP include object storage, data retrieval and several databases, including a supersized NoSQL database designed for handling real-time apps and large-scale analytic operations.

• Alibaba Cloud: Alibaba registered a 5% market share in 2023, thanks to its prominence within Asia. Its line of storage solutions features products like block storage, object storage, file storage, cloud storage and cloud backup.

• IBM Cloud®: Capturing approximately 4% of the CSP market, IBM Cloud Services’ roster of over 170 products covers on-premises, hybrid cloud and multicloud configurations.

Numerous other CSPs also service this market. The second tier of companies typically includes the following companies:

• China Telecom
• Huawei
• MongoDB
• Oracle
• Snowflake
• VMware