Companies often focus on concepts such as digital transformation, edge computing and hybrid cloud. But one more leverage point that’s empowering organizations to be more efficient and productive is consuming solutions in the as-a-service format.

With the commercialization of computers and the introduction of the internet and World Wide Web, the SaaS movement quickly gained momentum, leading to what’s widely recognized as the first modern SaaS offering: Salesforce Inc.’s customer relationship management platform, launched in 1999 and completely built from scratch.

Now, data and storage solutions companies such as Pure Storage Inc. are working to take as-a-service underpinnings and transpose them to infrastructure and microservices, known as storage as a service, or STaaS.

“SaaS offerings came out several years before [AWS did in 2006], and the idea of applying some of these concepts to infrastructure and simplifying deployment and management looked enticing to many customers,” said theCUBE’s industry analyst Dave Vellante.

Advantages like cost efficiency, user-friendliness and versatility have resulted in the rush to port every possible business application/process to a cloud-delivered as-a-service platform. And with total end-user public cloud spending set to surpass $500 billion by 2022’s end, as-a-service is proving profitable for both enterprise customers and solutions providers.

In separate interviews during a special broadcast from theCUBE and Pure Storage Inc., titled “At Your Storage Service,” Vellante spoke with Prakash Darji (pictured), general manager of the Digital Experience Business Unit at Pure Storage; Steve McDowell, senior analyst of data and storage at Moor Insights & Strategy; and Emile Stam, chief commercial officer and chief marketing officer at Open Line B.V. During the event, they discussed topics ranging from projections for the growth of the enterprise STaaS landscape to the steps companies like Open Line are taking to stay on top of customer needs and market clamor. (* Disclosure below.)

Simplification and monitoring are key to the proper ‘SaaSification’ of storage delivery

Companies today are increasingly wary of cloud spend, taking proactive measures to account for every dollar used. As IT operations have mostly moved from operating via capex as opposed to opex, with manageable and largely predictable fees, organizations are driving immense value by paying for the exact amount of storage resources they need, with the option to dial their existing capacity down in the future. This flexibility is why “as a service” makes so much sense for the enterprise.

Another reason for the STaaS trend taking hold is that companies want to standardize their approach to mission-critical operations, such as security.  

“In a world where security becomes increasingly important, where standardization will allow you to secure your landscape against ransomware and those types of things, those trends are driving the SaaSification of storage, and the only way to deliver that is through storage as a service,” said Darji during the event.

The pay-for-performance culture is also nifty when organizations don’t have an exact idea of their current needs. Since the data requirements of end-consumer apps can be grossly unpredictable, the ability to increase and decrease capacity, as required, can mitigate over- or under-provisioning as companies deploy. However, for all these advantages to make sense, especially in the long run, simplicity must be the core of every great STaaS offering, Darji pointed out. For example, having a company carry out laborious work ahead of any capacity increase or decrease defeats the original purpose of having that degree of flexibility.

“If the goal was: ‘I want to change from this service here to that service here,’ and a person needed to show up and do a day data migration, that’s kind of useless,” he said.

Monitoring, and the consistency with which Pure Storage does it, is a core differentiating factor for Pure and why its solutions see market popularity — in essence, the ability to execute changes, from policy to security updates, and have them reflect across the customer’s various deployment iterations.

“For us, the storage system is just an edge device,” Darji explained. “It can be sitting in your data center. It can be sitting hosted; an MSP can run it. It could even be sitting in the public cloud. That IoT thinking needs to come to storage, and that’s the foundation on which we built Pure as a Service.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Darji:

Analyzing the IT buyer and vendor perspectives

No matter how great a new approach is in business, organizations must always sit back and carefully sift through the “why” of it all — for all parties involved.

From an IT buyer’s view — be it a chief information officer or IT architect — taking advantage of the as-a-service model means they can align their storage and security operations with vendors they know and trust, at the same time weathering any uncertainties in relation to cost. But, of course, organizations are at varying stages in their cloud-native transformation journeys and, thus, present vastly different storage needs and bottom-line objectives. These organizations can rightfully look to STaaS solutions as a growth lever, according to McDowell.

“It gives me the flexibility as an IT architect to scale my business over time without worrying about how much money I have to invest in storage hardware,” he told theCUBE during the event. “So, it’s beautiful for organizations that are scaling and equally nice for organizations that just want to manage and control cost over time.”

From the vendor’s position, infrastructure as a service, with storage as one of its underlying branches, comes with a degree of simplicity and utility that keeps solutions companies like Pure Storage at the cutting edge.

“It’s a push-button approach to deploying storage to the applications and workloads that need it,” McDowell explained. “So, it becomes storage as a utility. It transcends the consumption-based economic model of ‘as a service.'”

In tech, whether consumer or enterprise-facing, a lack of forward momentum means regression. Thus, innovation is key to the future growth of the STaaS sector. That innovation will come from providers creating stronger integrations across multiple end-customer experiences, according to McDowell. Vendors must see the business as beyond just leasing storage arrays and racks, but rather employ end-to-end data management to drive increased utility.

Already accounting for $120 billion of total end-user cloud spending globally, IaaS (under which storage resides) is only second to SaaS. With such a strong showing already, the next few years will certainly be exciting to watch, McDowell added.

Here’s the complete video interview with McDowell:

Actionable takeaways for the enterprise

While the enterprise at large is quickly warming up to the idea of consuming storage as a service, Open Line’s experience with the technology sheds light on the direct logistics of implementation. Being a cloud managed service provider and helping Netherlands-based mid-sized companies navigate their transformation journeys, the company has insights into how as-a-service storage solutions are reimagining enterprise workflows.

The multiple features, benefits and products within typical IaaS offerings could often pose something of a distraction from the core business — and even be detrimental to the workflow, according to Stam. So, as companies embrace its streamlined integrations and security benefits, they needn’t stray too far from the core business operations.

Moving too fast, or without a compatible cloud adoption strategy, has often resulted in companies withdrawing from their cloud use due to unmet expectations (cloud repatriation). Thus, Open Line helps customers devise winning strategies and not view the cloud as “just another data set,” Stam explained.

“It’s all about managing the maturity on our side, but on our customer side as well,” he added.

Providing storage services and solutions through its partnership with Pure Storage, Open Line enjoys several intrinsic benefits, chief of which is the reduced personnel and resource requirements.

“We are far more adaptable. We have a near maintenance-free storage solution now because we have it as a service and we work closely together with Pure,” Stam concluded.

Here’s the complete video interview with Stam:

Watch the full event video below:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “At Your Storage Service” event. Neither Pure Storage Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE