The dynamic evolution of the  IT sector and with its proliferation of the digital world has undeniably driven businesses to join the bandwagon of cloud technology

While the mainstream of the storage array marketplace may be subjugated by a few big players,on the flip-side, we see many vendors offering low-priced external storage arrays at highly competitive rates. But, where does the real competition sets out for these corporations? Is it between each other, with the big players or possibly with cloud storage?

As per the recent research it has been revealed that the competition in the marketplace is soaring high and specially amongst array fabricators with SME storage products. The pundits say that this surge in competition for these suppliers could have possibly come primarily with the advent of the cloud storage technology instead of array suppliers of small and mid-level storage.

For them the main subjects of debate are:

- Why to get worked up over deployment of the small to medium IT infrastructure when your requirements are not that much?

- Why do the businesses have to get involved in the expense of building data centers from the scratch, hardware repair and maintenance, software periodic upgrades, and operational management?

Here, we would say that they are absolutely right, as  there is no point in building your own infrastructure right from scratch when you can avail the same type of services without incurring upfront costs.

Most of the service providers are trying their level best to keep themselves abreast of latest in technology by making themselves well equipped with highly sophisticated and cutting-edge systems to virtual servers, storage (either block or object storage) and applications.

When that many choices are available- do you think is it really compulsory to maintain local storage resources for the businesses?

Ultimately, the resolution comes down to threat management contrasted with operational and overhead cost. There is a  lot of scope for doing a viable investment in desktops or laptops (even with BYOD) and many organizations would choose to keep the possession of highly sensitive data, such as personnel, finance records, and customer and trade-related information.

From an operational perspective, we would say that being reliant on a cloud service provider for the services means that you can have highly robust and resilient network connection. Apart from this, you can get uninterrupted and surefire service levels through multiple suppliers, which means a shift in budget allocation curve.

Then, migration of the majority of data to the cloud platform also means a shift in expertise, with prime focus on concerns related to security, application design and resilience, as well as platform-as-a-service offerings.

Now the question that arises is that- will we be able to envision a dramatic upward shift in the number of businesses shifting gears from in-house IT resources to the cloud-based storage provisions? Secondly, will this transition process be gradual? Here, we would say that definitely the adoption rate might be slow but sure; the moment organizations become at ease with the cloud technology or when they re-skill, and as assets run down and come up for restitution.

In a nutshell, would conclude by saying that, we expect to see the storage industry to scale back considerably in the coming next five years time and will be a silhouette of its prior self in the time coming ahead. There are some big hindrances to cloud storage embracement at this moment , but these are possibly expected to diminish over time.