When Amazon Web Services Inc. pioneered infrastructure as a service in 2006, few people foresaw the global impact it would have. Yet as IaaS was joined by platform as a service and software as a service, it heralded the start of the modern cloud-computing era.

Thirteen years later, cloud computing is changing more than just the information-technology landscape. In a flywheel effect, cloud has created a momentum that is reaching out to change how the world interacts.

Businesses are being forced to abandon traditional siloed workplace structures, where each department acts independently, in favor of flexible and cooperative workflows. Even customer demands are changing, as Generation-C consumers expect everything tailored to their needs and delivered instantly.

“If you can change the operating model, you can get more out of your IT infrastructure and your infrastructure as a service than just lower cost or even better agility,” said Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “You can actually transform your business, create new types of business models.”

Speaking during theCUBE’s kickoff of coverage at the AWS Storage Day Boston event in Boston, Massachusetts, Vellante emphasized the strategic importance of storage as the basis beneath all the glitz and glamour of new advances in technology. (*Disclosure below)

“You’ve got to have sets of storage services that can support these new emerging workloads,” Vellante said.

Watch Vellante’s complete kickoff analysis for the AWS Storage Day event:

AWS sharpens focus on storage

The global cloud storage technology market is predicted to be worth close to $90 billion by 2022, boosted by the growing ecosystem for supporting cloud-based services. AWS is the global market leader, thanks to its web-based object storage Simple Storage Service, known as S3. Alongside S3, the company provides S3 Glacier for long-term archival storage and Elastic Block Storage, or EBS, designed to handle workloads for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2.

However, despite bringing in billions in revenue, strategic storage services have not comprised the largest part of AWS’ business, according to Vellante.

This is changing as the advent of intelligent apps brings storage into a new prominence. Data is required to fuel machine learning and artificial intelligence and provide the insights to increase productivity and customer relations. And more data means more demand for storage. Add the accessibility requirements demanded by edge computing and the strategic importance of a wide-reaching cloud storage portfolio becomes evident.

“Getting the data to be resident in the cloud is important because of proximity, meaning reduced latency, and then the ability to upsell other services — namely database, machine intelligence, and other valuable and profitable offerings,” Vellante stated.

File gains importance in AWS storage portfolio

With most of the world’s data stored in file formats such as Network File Standard, it’s logical for AWS to expand its storage portfolio to address this space, alongside expanding its services for S3, Glacier and EBS.

Sure enough, Storage Day 2019 saw the announcement of an expanded portfolio that makes the company much more competitive in the file storage space.

“This is a major total addressable market expansion move and signals AWS’ intent to grab more market share by giving customers more functional and broad storage choices,” Vellante said.

During AWS Storage Day, Wayne Duso, general manager for file, edge and on-premises presence, data transfer, and data protection businesses at AWS, weighed in on the topic: “All of these services are purpose-built for the type of storage that you need, the programming model that you need for your applications and workloads. Whether it’s object storage with S3 in Glacier, or block storage with EBS, or most recently file service with EFS and FSx file services … you have the tools at your disposal that you need based on your application workload.”

Mistakes were made in the early excitement of cloud migration. And it is now commonly accepted that moving lock, stock and barrel into the cloud “just because” is not a good idea. Security issues made the headlines, but they are just one of the many concerns associated with cloud migration. So, why should a company successfully running file services on-prem make the decision to move into the AWS cloud?

One reason is simplicity, according to Duso. When a customer chooses to move to the AWS Cloud, Amazon takes care of administration, provisioning and maintenance. “You literally click three or four buttons to create a file system, [and] you no longer have to worry about it ever again,” he stated.

Amazon also promises to maintain data in a secure environment. “Security is job number one for us,” Duso stated. “We take care of all the security elements.”

Ease of integration is also a major benefit, especially to companies wanting to take advantage of new intelligent technologies, Duso pointed out. The wide range of AWS’ products means that advanced tools for building and deploying machine-learning models, such as AWS SageMaker, can be integrated with file storage services, such as FSx for Lustre and EFS, bringing even more simplicity to the process.

“Customers don’t have to worry about storage; they don’t have to worry about sharing; they don’t have to worry about scaling. It’s all there for them,” Duso said.

Cloud brings global scale, but data must remain close to the user to avoid issues with availability and latency. AWS addresses this by creating regions where data is available in multiple locations.

“Our regions are built to have, at minimum, three availability zones,” Duso explained. “For example, when you stand up a file system with EFS, your file system is automatically distributed, replicated across all three availability zones within that region.”

This not only provides low latency but creates a backup in the event of a disaster.

Finally, there is platform efficiency. “You should really be bringing those workloads onto a platform like this so that you can spend your time on added value services or applications for your business,” Duso stated.

Here’s more insight into AWS’ storage strategy as explained in Duso’s complete interview:

AWS looks to provide the right tools for the right job

“We’re seeing a lot of innovation, expansion of the Amazon portfolio, optionality, granularity, performance … the right tool for the right job,” Vellante said.

Wrapping up theCUBE’s coverage of Storage Day 2019, Vellante pinpointed the ability to integrate storage with advanced technologies as the key takeaway from AWS’ storage announcements.

“It’s not only the benefits of being able to reduce all that undifferentiated heavy lifting. It’s really about the integrations,” Vellante said. “Whatever the Amazon engine does, now all these storage services can take advantage of that.”

Here’s Vellante’s closing analysis of AWS Storage Day 2019, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Storage Boston event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Storage Boston event. Neither AWS Storage, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Pixabay