THE clouds are just that, cloudy. Hard to figure out what anyone is talking about, or why. I’m here to help.

Until the market BELIEVES that it A: has a problem that needs to be solved and B: requires the cloud to be the answer to that problem, there will be no real business. The good news, is I believe that reality is coming, and there will be legit business opportunities here.

For the big dogs, like EMC, they (smartly) want the cloud to be private, because the private cloud is really “IT”–and they do well when IT is buying stuff. They want to arm the public cloud providers, who are essentially the IT departments of service providers, where (stunningly), EMC does well.

For the small guys, the problem is the same, but they can’t really afford to wait around for the market to figure out their relevance.

Nasuni, Cirtas, TwinStrata, and StorSimple I know. Gladinet and CTERA are in the space, but I’m less familiar with them. You will hear from more larger players shortly. All of these guys want to be the “gateway” to the cloud. All of them sound cool in my opinion. Not all of them will make it. What each will need to do is to tell you, very specifically, what problem they solve that you are willing to part ways with your money to do so. Until then, they will be cool, and no one will use them.

Each needs to realise that “cloud” isn’t a solution to a problem. It’s a means–or an enabler–to a solution. What each needs to focus on is the actual problem. When I read through StorSimple’s site, I see reference to Microsoft apps, like Sharepoint.

They should spend time on that space and in identifying that problem. There are lots of Sharepoint users, and lots of problems. Show me how your gizmo/ cloud combo solves those problems.

I love the Nasuni play–they effectively give you an endless Filer. They (as do most) cache locally on premise, present a file system, and then age files out to the cloud(s) all de-duped and economical. If you think about it, it’s the perfect tiering model. Why would you ever put any more file data on your SAN (which people do) at 10X the price?

The block equivalents, like TwinStrata, do the same thing–but the interface is iSCSI. Backup seems to be a nice app for them to focus on.

The trick is to find the applications that are causing pain, and explaining how these solutions ease that pain.  If there is no pain, it won’t matter if it’s cheaper, better, or faster.

If you have a SAN or File environment and can’t afford (economics) or can’t sustain (management) it, those are problems. If you need/want to back up to a dedupe target but aren’t going to pay for Data Domain, that’s a problem with a solution.

Focus on the problem, not on the solution. A solution without a problem is like when people advertise Pampers diapers to me. I’ve had chemo, radiation, and a vasectomy. If I need diapers, it will be Depends, not Pampers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Steve Duplessie is the founder of and Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. Recognised worldwide as the leading independent authority on enterprise storage, Steve has also consistently been ranked as one of the most influential IT analysts. You can track Steve’s blog at http://www.thebiggertruth.com