The Cloud has garnered quite a bit of media storm since its advent with big names like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Sun throwing in their hats in the ring. Not to mention the controversy kicked up by McKinsey’s uncharitable comments on the Cloud.
We have always believed that the Cloud would be a valuable addition to an MSP’s arsenal – and we went about supporting Amazon Cloud services precisely because of that. This enabled our partners to either operate their entire backup service out of Amazon’s EC2/S3 services or simply leverage S3 storage service for the offsite replication. And we are sure glad we were able to see the business value this brought to MSPs early on and be among the first to adopt this crucial step in the backup/storage industry.
The concepts of substance and form always been closely examined since historical times. Steve DuPlessie (of ESG fame) gave a unique twist to this age-old ‘form vs. substance’ conundrum with this incisive post on the Cloud here -
Surely, the Cloud is a very convenient ‘construct’ – so much so that it took a lot of time for the industry and analysts to even pin down a definition for the Cloud! Steve makes two significant points in this post – one, that ‘being’ a Cloud is a sure way to failing in the long run (after a great round A valuation, of course 
) and two, that ‘using’ the Cloud for viable solutions will be better off than those masquerading AS the Cloud.
The Cloud ‘form’ became very important for all those who sought to ride the media wave when the Cloud started getting a whole lot of media attention last year. I noticed several BU/DR firms started sporting the term ‘Cloud Backups’. This was funny since none of them had even the basic characteristics of cloud computing (like scalablilty (on the scale of the Amazon Cloud), true pay-for-what-you-use model, etc.) – features which can only come through actual seamless integration of a backup solution with a Cloud service provider.
I believe that the ’substance’ of the Cloud is what counts for a service provider – the solution to her client’s problem that makes business sense for her to provide. Not all the ‘form’ – backup players sporting websites with ‘Cloud’ strewn all over – the proverbial new bottle for their old wine.
Vembu StoreGrid has provided a perfect platform for MSPs to USE the Cloud where it makes perfect business sense. Case in point, offsite replication from StoreGrid to Amazon’s dependable S3 storage service costs less than 50cents/GB/month*. Before this, MSPs were used to spending ridiculous amounts to get offsite storage services of questionable security with no scalability or pay-for-use model.
We still see a lot of backup players going gung-ho about Cloud related terms for their backup solutions – Public Clouds (as opposed to what?), Hybrid Clouds (an umbrella term meant to cover all they wished were a Cloud, but wasn’t)…. and so on.
I see that when the dust settles on the Cloud phenomenon, MSPs will be quick to see what is getting passed of as ‘Cloud Backups’ to them. I think the day when the skies will clear is not far off and all undeserved ‘Cloud Backup’ terms in several websites will be off in a jiffy!
* – As of 1st Feb 2010. Please check the latest AWS pricing here.
The above post was written by Gokul Sriram of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.
Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.
