In a world where a rideshare, a four-course meal, or tickets to a concert down the street can be delivered with just a few taps on a smartphone, enterprise storage has become commoditized as well.

Anyone looking for high-performance block storage at any scale can have it delivered with just a few clicks. This is how Amazon Web Services Inc. and other cloud providers have transformed the enterprise storage market. The choice is no longer based on specific storage hardware and software types. It’s storage-as-a-service, and it has become an important driver in the AWS business strategy.

“Storage is strategic to Amazon’s approach to cloud,” said Steve McDowell, an analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, in an interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “If you doubt that, ask yourself what other public cloud company hosts an annual Storage Day.” 

The cloud provider will hold its third annual and free-to-attend AWS Storage Day on September 2, from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm PDT. The live event will include exclusive insights and announcements from leaders across AWS Storage. TheCUBE’s coverage of AWS Storage Day will include interviews with Wayne Duso, vice president of engineering, and Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, VP of AWS Storage. (* Disclosure below.)

Migrating sizable applications

While storage is being effectively commoditized for enterprise workloads and applications in the cloud, the scale of migration is growing larger. Last year, the U.S. Navy migrated its largest SAP enterprise resource planning system with 72,000 users to AWS. The result was a centralization in the cloud of $70 billion worth of goods and parts.

“Amazon’s innovations in storage today focuses on increasing performance, scalability and reliability,” McDowell noted. “AWS’ guaranteed performance offering for block storage, io2, delivers nearly twice the throughput and capacity and 60% better IOPs, than its closest competitor. This kind of performance is critical if demanding (and lucrative) applications, like SAP HANA, are going to migrate to the public cloud.”

Processor competition

The focus by AWS on accelerating scalability and performance in the storage field has not gone unnoticed by other large tech giants. When migrations of the Navy’s size become involved, competition for similarly profitable contracts in the storage space is sure to follow.

While the obvious competition comes from other hyperscalers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, AWS is also competing with major chipmakers on the system architecture front. Over the past three years, AWS has pursued a strategy to migrate from x86 architecture originally developed by Intel Corp. to its own Arm-based platforms.

Intel’s response has been the launch of an Infrastructure Processing Unit, a programmable networking device designed to better utilize CPU resources and balance processing and storage. Intel has deployed IPUs with Azure and has formed partnerships with Baidu Inc. and VMware Inc.

“Amazon’s competitors aren’t sitting still in the face of this innovation,” McDowell said. “Intel’s IPU is designed to accelerate storage and network processing in hyperscale-class environments.”

Cold storage options

Not to be forgotten in the discussion of Amazon’s market influence is its approach over the years to cold storage. The company’s extension of object through its S3 platform created numerous levels of archival storage and impacted the ways in which many firms crafted data management strategies.

At re:Invent in December, AWS announced a replication service that automatically transfers data to colder storage tiers based on 90-day and 180-day windows. “Smart tiering” could be next in the AWS game plan for storage.

“We’d like to see intelligent tiering where the machine is smart enough to promote certain data sets when needed — like at quarter end for comparisons,” said Dave Vellante, co-founder and chief research officer at Wikibon and host of theCUBE, in a recent analysis of AWS. “We’d like to see more policy options than just a fixed 90- and 180-day policy. But as NFL Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram would say: AWS is matriculating the ball down the field.”

Livestream of AWS Storage Day

AWS Storage Day is a livestream event, with additional interviews to be broadcasted on theCUBE. You can register for free here to access the live event. Plus, you can watch theCUBE interviews here on demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of AWS Storage Day, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during AWS Storage Day include AWS’ Wayne Duso, vice president of engineering; Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, VP of Block and Object Storage; Ed Naim, general manager of Amazon FSx; Nancy Wang, GM of AWS Backup and data protection services; and Duncan Lennox, GM of Amazon Elastic File System.

Stay tuned for a complete list of speakers.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Storage Day. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE Media