The CF List: 20 Cloud Storage Service Providers You Should Know
AWS, Google and Microsoft Azure continue to dominate the cloud storage market.
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IDC’s Andrew Smith cited Alibaba Cloud among top public cloud storage providers.
An effective cloud storage solution includes a wide variety of deployment models, including on dedicated infrastructure, multi-tenant public cloud infrastructure, and on-and off-premised, he said. It’s also able to meet or exceed performance of alternative storage systems products, is available through a range of purchase models, and committed to pricing/billing transparency and a proven record of cost reduction and efficiency measures.
Omdia’s Dennis Hahn and Smith said AWS is one of the big three in cloud storage that have dominated the market. This fall, AWS announced the general availability of Amazon FSx for NetApp OnTap, a new storage service that allows customers to launch and run complete, fully managed NetApp OnTap file systems in the cloud for the first time.
S&P Global’s Henry Baltazar, Hahn and Smith cited BackBlaze among noteworthy cloud storage providers. Since its initial public offering (IPO) at $16 per share last month, Backblaze has already seen its stock price surge by more than 100%, and is now trading around $31 a share.
Baltazar said BackBlaze is known for designing its own architecture for low-cost storage.
Smith said Cohesity is among providers in a more gray area between cloud storage and cloud data management, but still noteworthy. Cohesity has been named to the Forbes 2021 Cloud 100, the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world.
Baltazar said data protection is one area of cloud storage that’s on the rise.
“That’s the area where there’s buzz,” he said. That’s the area where we could see some interesting IPOs. It’s the area that’s gaining traction.”
Hahn and Smith said Google Cloud is one of the big three in cloud storage that have dominated the market.
“I think COVID-19 and the move to remote workers gave enterprises a new awareness of cloud,” he said. “Cloud storage gives everyone equal access to data whether they are in the office or remote. Domain controllers (DCs) can also be completely managed remotely, so enterprise admins can also work remotely.”
Smith said Huawei is a cloud storage contender. Huawei’s Data Management Engine (DME) is an storage management platform that simplifies storage management, and operations and maintenance to improve the operational efficiency of data centers.
Smith cited IBM among leading cloud storage providers. In July, IBM announced plans to roll out a new storage-as-a-service offering. This aims to give customers a new way to integrate hybrid cloud storage into any data center environment. It also eliminates the need for the upfront capital expense of a system purchase.
Smith said Linode is among noteworthy cloud storage providers. In September, Linode committed to revamping the storage infrastructure across its 11 data centers, which include sites in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Linode positions itself as an alternative public cloud provider offering customers an affordable and easier to use set of services.
Smith said LucidLink is among providers in a more gray area between cloud storage and cloud data management, but still noteworthy. In May, the cloud storage startup announced it has raised $12 million in a series A funding round led by Headline, with participation from Baseline Ventures, Bright Cap Ventures, and Adobe. LucidLink said it will use the capital to support its growth and customer experience.
Smith said Lumen Technologies is a cloud storage contender. Lumen has brought its fully-managed private cloud services to its edge platform. The new Lumen Edge Private Cloud is designed for customers who want a cloud platform’s benefits, combined with the security and low latency of an edge-based solution. The service includes compute, storage, network and security.
Hahn said Microsoft Azure is one of the big three in cloud storage that have dominated the market. Smith also cited Azure as a big contender. Azure Blob Storage is a scalable and secure object storage for cloud-native workloads, archives, data lakes, high-performance computing and machine learning (ML).
Smith said Nasuni is among providers in a more gray area between cloud storage and cloud data management, but still noteworthy. Nasuni offers a continuously versioning file system that automatically stores file changes as they occur directly in cloud storage.
Smith said OVHcloud is a noteworthy cloud storage provider. OVHcloud is advancing its cloud storage platform through its recent acquisition of Exten Technologies. With the acquisition, OVHcloud will be able to build and offer more cost-efficient block storage solutions.
Baltazar and Smith said Oracle is a cloud storage contender. Oracle has expanded its Oracle Cloud service into the Nordic market for the first time with the launch of a new region located in Stockholm, Sweden. This is the company’s 35th region and it plans to reach 44 by the end of next year.
Smith said Panzura is among providers in a more gray area between cloud storage and cloud data management, but still noteworthy. Companies globally in the financial services, health care, manufacturing, media and entertainment, gaming and construction industries, as well as government agencies, use Panzura to manage hundreds of petabytes of data in the cloud.
Baltazar said Rackspace Technology has entered the cloud storage market with a distinct advantage over competitors.
“Rackspace just launched more of their cloud storage this past year,” he said. “Traditionally, Rackspace didn’t have a standalone cloud storage service before, but they’ve come to the realization that they should. As as a data center type provider and having those network interconnections, they’re able to leverage that. One of the other trends we’re looking at is colocated storage, so that’s putting the storage services in a colocation center where you have a direct landlink to the various clouds.”
Smith cited Tencent Cloud among top cloud storage providers. Tencent’s Cloud File Storage (CFS) is a secure and scalable file sharing and storage solution. It can be used in conjunction with Tencent Cloud’s servers, container service, and batch computing service. CFS provides multiple computing nodes with shared storage featuring scalable capacity and performance.
Hahn said along with BackBlaze, Wasabi is among smaller providers that have shown some breakout momentum.
“Wasabi is the best example of a storage pureplay who has successfully entered the market doing one thing very well (low cost, performant object storage services) and carved out a space in the market in a relatively short period of time,” Smith said.
Baltazar said Wasabi is an interesting player.
“One interesting nuance about Wasabi is they attacked one of the key pain points in this cloud storage market, which is egress charges or the charge to make data accessible outside of the cloud via internet or moving between zones,” he said. “That winds up being something a lot of customers complain about, and Wasabi’s way of disrupting is offering a service with reduced egress charges.”
Zadara recently announced a partnership with Zenlayer, a global edge cloud service provider. Zadara’s enterprise-class, consumption-based, fully-managed zStorage is now available in Zenlayer’s North American locations and will soon expand into emerging markets such as India, China and South America.
Zadara recently announced a partnership with Zenlayer, a global edge cloud service provider. Zadara’s enterprise-class, consumption-based, fully-managed zStorage is now available in Zenlayer’s North American locations and will soon expand into emerging markets such as India, China and South America.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated customer cloud adoption and cloud migration programs, and increased awareness in cloud storage service providers.
A cloud storage service stores data on the internet through a cloud computing provider who manages and operates data storage as a service.
According to Allied Market Research, the global cloud storage industry is expected to exceed $222 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of nearly 22%.
Our latest CF List focuses on cloud storage service providers. Analysts with Omdia, S&P Global Market Intelligence and IDC weighed in on cloud storage market trends and what it takes to be a successful cloud storage service provider.
Cloud Storage Helped During COVID-19
451 Research’s Henry Baltazar
Henry Baltazar is research director at S&P Global’s 451 Research.
“The cloud wound up helping in a lot of gaps,” he said. “Especially early on in the pandemic, it wasn’t as easy to get things delivered. We had situations where data centers weren’t that accessible … you’d only have half the staff in any given time. So I think cloud helped solve that gap for some of the customers. We did see some customers that, even with limitations to the supply chain and things like that, still weren’t ready to go to cloud. The market continues to evolve, but people that don’t do cloud are still going to have some objections.”
According to a recent S&P Global report, 59% of storage users said public cloud spending is impacting their on-premises storage budgets.
“CIOs start thinking let’s try to move this to cloud so we can get to OpEx cost,” Baltazar said. “And it’s not just OpEx cost, but maybe it’s better if the cloud is managing the hardware and taking care of those things as opposed to having dedicated people babysitting these boxes. If something’s in the cloud, you don’t worry about a network port dying or a controller dying, or hardware dying or even hardware being refreshed. That’s all cloud responsibility. So that’s part of the dynamic in terms of what’s happened in the past year. And part of the acceleration is you have more and more organizations realizing they want to reduce the OpEx cost and not just the CapEx cost.”
Changing Cloud Storage Buyer Behavior
IDC’s Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith is a research manager in IDC’s enterprise infrastructure practice. He said from a storage and infrastructure perspective, the pandemic has made many organizations more risk averse. That has impacted cloud storage buyer behavior.
“More than ever, buyers want flexible, OpEx-based purchase models (e.g., consumption based, subscription based),” he said. “The landscape in the public cloud storage market has not changed significantly among the top five providers in the past year. What is interesting is the level of partnership going on between public cloud providers (e.g., AWS, NetApp OnTap), and a range of new market entrants in the small-mid market, specifically on the storage side (Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi).”
Omdia’s Dennis Hahn
Dennis Hahn is principal data analyst of data center storage at Omdia. He said the most effective cloud storage solution offers the ability to store massive amounts of data with acceptable access latencies and at a low cost.
“Of course they need to have a S3-compatible API,” he said. “The [storage] also has to be highly scalable and with good high availability to data.”
The Big Three
The big three — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Azure — have dominated the cloud storage market, Hahn said. Smaller cloud storage vendors have been growing for data-centric and specific use cases.
“Smaller cloud storage vendors seem to be getting market traction by positioning storage closer to the edge and being more cost effective for certain workloads – video and backup mostly,” he said. “Making the users feel like they have control over their data is a factor. Data sovereignty and in-country storing are important.”
We’ve compiled a list, in alphabetical order, of 20 top cloud storage service providers. It’s based on analysts’ feedback and recent news reports. The list is by no means complete. It includes a mix of well-known providers as well as lesser-known ones making strides in cloud storage.
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