Why On-Premises Storage is Top of Mind for Organizations in 2024

Throughout the last few years, a notable shift has emerged amongst organizations reconsidering their reliance on cloud storage, opting instead for on-premise solutions. This trend is seeing organizations scaling back or eliminating the use of cloud services, whether for large enterprises, SMBs, or scaling startups. This “out with the cloud” paradigm shift is driven by a variety of factors including cost efficiency, reliability and the risks this dependence poses, as well as performance and technological advancements. Recent events such as the CrowdStrike global IT outage, which caused severe disruptions for businesses across all industries, are a large-scale reminder of why many organizations are investing in on-premise storage solutions for mission-critical applications.   

Rethinking Cloud Storage Costs

Cloud-first strategies have been attractive storage models for companies since its emergence as a viable option, promising ease of use and minimal maintenance overhead. The cloud promises to be fast and affords users an alleged “worry-free” solution that eliminates ongoing maintenance of servers and other storage architecture - an attractive proposition for organizations that want to reduce OPEX as much as possible. However, over the last 10 years, many organizations' investments in and usage of cloud storage services have accrued an unnecessarily expensive bill that shows no signs of coming down. Furthermore, different performance tiers come at varying price points, with high-performance options often carrying substantial expenses. Data transmission costs are an additional hurdle to overcome because the cost of physically storing data in the cloud, coupled with the cost of sending and receiving data, amounts to a large sum of money that can quickly consume IT budgets.

Of most importance and concern is that cloud dependence is risky. The recent CrowdStrike global IT outage is a prime example of why many customers are pivoting to an on-premise approach; it’s more cost-effective and reliable to run applications on-site.

Virtualization, sandboxing, virtual machine (VM) snapshots and data rollbacks are a few key tools available today that help companies build robust and dependable infrastructures. It’s essential for organizations to test software upgrades against a sandbox environment running on the same hardware before rolling it into production. Following this best practice could help avoid potentially devastating outages and/or downtime events. Consequently, the global scale of this event and the chaotic panic that ensued as a result of these business disruptions underscores the importance of onsite storage options for mission-critical processes, at a minimum.

Reliability and Performance  

Technological advancements continue to evolve rapidly, meriting a more consistent and routine reconsideration of storage strategies and investments. On-premise solutions have long been recognized for their cost-effectiveness and enhanced reliability, and as IT outages of increasing size and scope continue to rise, many are reconsidering reinvesting in these time-tested storage methods. 

Let's take edge computing as an example, where organizations have dozens, hundreds or thousands of sites to manage. These environments typically desire 100% uptime of data and as the volume of data processed at the edge continues to increase at an exponential rate, the cloud cannot reliably keep up – at least not without a shocking price tag. 

Companies with cloud storage models are dependent on receiving and retrieving data over the internet every second of every day. This in turn requires costly, high-performance networking infrastructure at every site and the need for internet connections with built-in redundancy, a format which incurs additional costs. In addition, remote locations, such as wind or solar farms or cruise ships, where edge sites may either lack internet connectivity or experience extremely poor connections, can significantly impact the ability to send or retrieve critical data from the cloud.

In addition to these reliability issues, performance is also a key attribute to consider. There are a plethora of applications that cannot tolerate the time it takes for data to move from onsite and then through the numerous network switches and routers , to reach the cloud, and back again. This latency just doesn’t work for many applications required to run at these smaller sites. An extreme example would be for an autonomous vehicle that could potentially make the wrong driving decision if the onboard computer system was waiting for a response from the cloud to determine what an object was in the field of view.

All of these reasons listed above should be – and are actively – causing organizations to shift their attention to on-prem storage as the ideal method for modern data needs.

Looking Ahead in 2024 and Beyond

While cloud storage will always be part of corporate IT strategies, it’s losing its position as the premiere storage method for many organizations, as on-prem storage has an edge that the cloud can’t compare to. On-prem offers more for less: decreased prices, enhanced reliability and performance, and secure uptime, all of which can be business-critical and culminate into why companies should be rethinking their current storage model.

As technology continues to advance and the risks of cloud-first strategies are exacerbated, the shift towards on-prem storage will accelerate, marking a significant revolution in how organizations manage their data infrastructure moving forward.

About the author

Bruce Kornfeld is an experienced technology executive who has held leadership roles in marketing, product management, alliances, and business development in the storage, server, networking, and security industries. He joined StorMagic in 2017, and serves as chief product officer, where he is responsible for all aspects of product management, global marketing, and alliances for the company. Prior to joining StorMagic, Bruce held marketing and product leadership positions at Compellent, Dell, and NCR. He helped Compellent grow its revenue from $9M to more than $150M, which led to its IPO and eventual sale to Dell for $960M, and was instrumental in building and growing Dell’s first storage division to over $1 billion. Bruce holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s Degree in Engineering as well as a Master of Business Administration, all from Cornell University.