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Datacom’s Storage as a Service (StaaS) gives businesses true scalability and control over their data. With no minimum or maximum limits, companies genuinely pay per gigabyte, allowing them to flex usage up and down as their situation requires. It’s the ideal storage solution for fast-changing industries, growing businesses and data-intensive projects. It's fully managed, reducing your operational overheads and it can be deployed at your edge sites or data centre facilities, or hosted on your behalf, providing a truly flexible consumption model.
“The world is changing quicker than it ever has before, especially in terms of technology,” says Stephen Coles, GM Cloud at Datacom. “StaaS is about avoiding upfront investment and commitments and instead having an evergreen service that grows as your needs grow. It gives you the exact service performance you need, finding that balance between flexibility and control. This approach makes it easier for organisations to adapt and innovate to keep pace with emerging tech and new opportunities related to AI.”
StaaS can replace storage procurement and lease models, both of which present big challenges in terms of flexibility and funding. On-premises data centres and infrastructure typically have huge upfront procurement costs with long lead times and ongoing maintenance costs. “You often have to procure more than you need up front and if you need more, you have to go to your CFO and ask for additional funding, when there’s often nothing in the budget,” says Coles.
Leasing avoids sizable upfront costs, but still locks companies into set usage contracts that require an accurate prediction of data use and a commitment for three to five years.
“Paying per gigabyte and choosing flexible consumption models allows you to make decisions that align your business to cloud models and allow you to pay as you grow,” Coles says. “Using a consumption-based model gives your organisation greater financial control while allowing you to easily respond to changing business priorities and unforeseen events.”
There are two StaaS options for Datacom’s Australian and New Zealand customers. The first is a hosted shared service with no commitment and no maximum or minimum use terms. The second is a dedicated StaaS, deployed wherever you need it, with performance guarantees. For both options, you get a full managed storage service and your data remains onshore, ensuring local sovereignty and compliance. Infrastructure hardware is provided by Dell, one of the world’s leading enterprise-class storage providers.
“Dell is a market leader in storage technology. We’ve been closely partnered with them for 20 years and as a global Titanium Partner we get access to more flexible models and the latest Dell services, ahead of our competitors, with these benefits passed directly to our customers.”
When a large Australian government public health agency launched its new medical imaging service, it wanted its data stored onsite at its statewide imaging sites. The organisation knew that, initially, it wouldn’t need massive storage volumes. But how fast would demand grow? How much storage might it need in a year’s time? It was difficult to predict, which made StaaS an ideal solution.
“They knew the volumes would get big, but they didn’t know how quickly that would happen,” explains Coles. “A fully managed per-gigabyte storage system allowed them to scale. They could do their testing, prove the application and then build over time. Now, it’s growing every month as the number of images stored increases.”
In New Zealand, a leading provider of laboratory and pathology services faced similar challenges, this time for storing data on laboratory tests. Datacom’s StaaS provided storage across three locations and allowed the company to scale its storage as test results accumulated.
It’s not always about growth. There are also options to help manage costs. For example, medical businesses must store records and have them available. As those records age, though, they can be moved to a lower-cost storage option that works well when retrieval is less frequent and accessibility can be slightly less immediate; minutes, rather than seconds.
A Datacom customer in the public sector successfully used StaaS to manage its data requirements across the course of a major project. With a legislated timeline to change its systems and reevaluate its model, this organisation used Datacom storage for just two years. Usage scaled up as demand grew, then the project wound down, gradually seeing a decrease in storage volumes.
“We often find this approach wins in greenfield environments, where a customer is doing something new,” says Coles. “With a lease model, you’re locked in without knowing what the volume will be. People worry, understandably, that they’ll lock in tens of thousands of dollars a month in costs and never use all their storage and then they’ve wasted money.”
Although the question of data storage might seem primarily a technical concern, the financial aspect is often the decisive factor. Switching to a cloud-based solution means that a business is now funding its data storage through regular operational expenditure, rather than a large capital outlay on physical infrastructure. That has the potential to free up capex for innovation. Plus, outsourcing data storage services to Datacom can assist in freeing up time for your IT team to do more work on problem-solving and fresh ideas.
Ultimately, with budgets under increasing scrutiny, StaaS provides a way to pay only for what you use, reduce ongoing maintenance overheads and manage your costs closely.
“As businesses grow, how do you stand up the infrastructure and the people that you need? How do you make sure you can grow? Datacom provides a safe pair of hands to make sure your infrastructure is secure and reliable. And unlike some of our competitors that put a minimum on your gigabyte usage, ours is a true consumption model. StaaS allows you to pivot and change as your needs change and avoids locking you in. You’re avoiding unnecessary spending and derisking yourself from what the future brings.”
New Zealand's critical infrastructure industries run on digital, interconnected infrastructure, from power grids to cloud-enabled commerce. A complex web of networks powers growth, but also exposes critical systems to cyber, physical and operational risks. It's imperative organisations in critical infrastructure industries are resilient. Digital resilience is the capacity to anticipate, withstand, adapt to and recover from disruption, including cyber attacks and supply chain shocks. It weaves technology, process, compliance and culture to keep operations secure, scalable and future-ready.
