Many businesses have adopted a cloud-first strategy to support and deploy their applications. As such, they’ve expanded into a multicloud posture to maximize elasticity and support global operations. But this strategy has some drawbacks, specifically around predictable costs, security, and more importantly, the data that needs to be generated and stored. No single cloud provider is right for every workload, and while most enterprises recognize the benefits of multicloud, they often struggle to fully realize those benefits.
If these businesses don’t approach the cloud with a carefully considered strategy, they may not be able to get insights and visibility into where their data resides, who accesses it and how they can best secure it. High egress fees can drive up the cost of moving data out of a particular cloud, which means they won’t have the flexibility to move the right workloads to the right cloud at the right time. Also, with cloud native storage alone, they may not be able to:
- Move data over the right connections to meet the privacy and performance requirements of their cloud applications
- Store data in an environment with enterprise-class features that simplify administration and keep costs down
- Keep data where they need it to meet their residency and sovereignty requirements
- Properly budget for the cost of data storage and services, which can fluctuate with many cloud native storage offerings
Enterprises need a new way to access cloud services without sacrificing control over their data. This is where cloud adjacent storage can help.
Maintain control over data in hybrid multicloud environments
Cloud adjacent storage is not a specific service or product that businesses acquire all in one package. Rather, it’s a strategy built around a certain operational model. As the name suggests, cloud adjacent storage is about storing data near the public cloud but not necessarily in the public cloud. It allows businesses to easily establish low-latency connectivity to multiple cloud providers, thus enabling on-demand access to cloud services.
Applications are generally ephemeral in nature, and that means they can easily be deployed across multiple locations, including cloud, on-premises and colocation. However, the data associated with those applications doesn’t offer the same flexibility. This is why many businesses continue to struggle with managing data in their multicloud environments.
The typical way to use data in the cloud is to move your data to the cloud. Businesses have many options for storage to help them do this. They’ll generally default to cloud native storage offerings, but can also utilize third-party storage services from vendors they have a history with. Cloud native storage offerings introduce different design and integration challenges compared to running data services on-premises. They also create additional complexity and costs that businesses generally wouldn’t encounter in on-premises environments.
In contrast, cloud adjacent storage allows you to:
- Place data adjacent to the public clouds and cloud services instead of within a given cloud provider. You can keep a “gold” or primary copy of system-of-record data in a centralized, secure location for use with cloud services and applications, while maintaining control over that data.
- Move a copy of your data into the cloud when needed, while still keeping the primary dataset in your own storage environment. This enables you to project and delete: When you’re done using a particular dataset in the cloud, you can simply delete that copy. You don’t have to pay egress fees just to get it back into your own storage environment.
- Flexibly pivot from one cloud or cloud service to another without needing to move the associated data.
Cloud adjacent storage is about taking back control over your data, using private storage infrastructure rather than cloud native storage. Since this core storage environment is used to maintain authoritative copies of your data, we call it the authoritative data core.
The authoritative data core sits in the middle of your data plane, enabling low-latency connections to both edge and cloud. This means you can ensure a free flow of data back and forth from your remote sites to multiple cloud providers. You’ll also be able to reach GPU service providers, an essential part of any AI-ready storage strategy.
Why cloud adjacent storage at Equinix?
As you pursue the benefits of cloud adjacent storage, where you do it matters. It goes without saying that you’ll need to work with a partner that can help you get close to your chosen cloud providers in all the right locations.
Equinix is well positioned to be that partner, thanks to our data center footprint that spans 70+ major markets on six continents. We’re also the global leader in low-latency cloud on-ramps. This means that we offer high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity to all major cloud providers in many different regions throughout the world.
Of course, you’ll also want to work with a partner that makes it easy to get the premium storage infrastructure and services that your cloud adjacent strategy demands. Once again, Equinix delivers. You can choose from a wide range of deployment options at Equinix, including customized colocation and Storage as a Service.
With Equinix Metal®, you can access familiar tools from leading storage vendors running on dedicated bare metal servers:
This gives you the same control and ease of management you’d get from running these tools on-premises, with the added flexibility you can only get from a virtual storage solution.
In addition, you can deploy managed storage via Equinix Managed Solutions. This can provide the flexible, customized storage environment you need, while removing the complexity of managing it yourself. This frees you to focus less on storage and more on the things that really matter to your business.
No matter which deployment option you choose, you can pair it with Equinix Fabric® for private, high-performance multicloud networking capabilities on demand.
How does cloud adjacent storage drive economic benefits?
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) by TechTarget recently performed a qualitative analysis of the economic benefits of deploying cloud adjacent storage at Equinix.[1] The analysis confirmed that cloud adjacent storage offers lower, more predictable costs. The ESG report found that these lower costs were driven by a variety of factors:
- Customers can avoid fees for data egress and API calls. The more data they need to move, the greater their savings are.
- Customers can simplify storage administration, thanks to a consistent data plane that grants them complete visibility across all their datasets.
- Customers can reduce their overall storage burden with high-speed data access and deduplication and compression capabilities.
Thanks to all these benefits, Equinix cloud adjacent storage helps customers reduce their storage costs by up to 67%. The ESG report also found that customers are enjoying many non-financial benefits from cloud adjacent storage, including greater agility, easy access to enterprise-class storage features and reduced risk in their storage environments.
To learn more about these and other benefits that customers are getting with cloud adjacent storage at Equinix, read the ESG report Economic Validation: Analyzing the Economic Benefits of Equinix Cloud Adjacent Storage.
[1] Aviv Kaufmann, Economic Validation: Analyzing the Economic Benefits of Equinix Cloud Adjacent Storage, ESG by TechTarget, February 2024.
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