Storage as a Service is growing in popularity in the UK as businesses seek efficient ways to store the ever-increasing volumes of data that are produced. There remain some concerns about it, but resellers should look to overcome these.
With businesses of all sizes and in every sector producing more data than ever before, storage is paramount, but managing it is increasingly complex, which is fuelling demand for Storage as a Service (StaaS) across the board – and it can provide important opportunities for resellers too.
Stewart Parkin, global CTO at Assured Data Protection, says StaaS adoption is accelerating rapidly. “This is driven by the explosion of unstructured data and the need for predictable, scalable storage models,” he says. “While early adoption was led by larger enterprises with complex data management needs, we’re now seeing significant uptake among SMBs as well. This shift is being fuelled by hybrid working, cloud-first strategies and a general move towards OpEx over CapEx investment models.”
Harry Mason, head of new business at Mason Infotech, agrees. “In SMBs, StaaS has largely replaced on-premises shared storage servers,” he adds. “This is a trend that was slowly unfolding until 2020, and then had a huge acceleration when businesses had to adapt to a ‘work from anywhere’ model. This approach to working has remained, which is why popularity continues to grow.”
Muhammad Imran, director channel EMEA, SSG at Lenovo, adds: “SMBs value the adaptability of a service-based model and the simplification of their IT infrastructure, while larger businesses appreciate the ability to scale seamlessly, especially as they look to implement AI solutions and make use of increasing amounts of data.”
HPE sees all types of customers; enterprise, commercial and public sector adopting a ‘hybrid by design’ approach, adds Adam Jennings, HPE channel data services sales leader, UK, Ireland, Middle East & Africa. “Consciously adopting the right mix of on-premises and cloud, particularly with the growing use of data-intensive applications such as AI and analytics,” he says.
“Customers need the flexibility to keep sensitive data on site, while the growth of compliance and regulation such as GDPR and DORA means that the reason to select StaaS is more pertinent than ever. Customers are all too familiar with the benefits of public cloud, the speed, flexibility, ease of deployment. We see the opportunity to replicate this experience for on-premises workloads as fundamental to the operating model of the future.”
Compliance
As Adam says, compliance is a priority and StaaS platforms are designed with compliance in mind. “They offer features such as immutable storage, retention policies, and audit trails to help meet regulations like GDPR, ISO 27001 and industry-specific mandates,” says Stewart. “When paired with the right provider, businesses can improve compliance posture compared to on-premises setups that may lack robust governance controls.”
Muhammad adds that reputable StaaS providers can support any business’s data compliance requirements, with solutions tailored to industry specific requirements and a strong baseline of security and good data management practice. “Data sovereignty requirements are another key factor, with customers defining their needs up front to ensure compliance in the physical location of their data as well,” he says.
Benefits of StaaS
As well as compliance, there are many other benefits of StaaS. Harry says that for most businesses, StaaS is an included feature of their general office suite licensing. “For our customers in particular, SharePoint comes with 1TB of storage, which is more than enough for most SMBs,” he says.
“Object-storage architecture that you see in StaaS models are highly fault-tolerant and geographically redundant, which means that you have a storage solution that is disaster-proof, whether that disaster is natural or human made.
“Cloud-based storage allows teams to work from anywhere, which in turn allows businesses to be more agile with where and when their teams work, opening new geographies for acquiring new business and hiring new team members.”
Markus Rex, general manager at SYNAXON Services, points to the flexibility to add capacity – or reduce it – at any time as a major benefit. “This means you don’t need to invest in capacity you may never use,” he says. “That can also help with cost as you only pay for what you use. It also means you don’t have to manage backups and/or storage resources in-house.”
Adam says StaaS offers a dynamic way to simplify IT operations, complete with the ability to predict and fine-tune storage, all while keeping pace with the soaring data growth that comes from cloud and edge applications. “With StaaS, enterprise IT can avoid over-provisioning, reduce infrastructure costs and scale capacity and workloads easier,” he says. “With StaaS, the provider administers monitoring, load balancing and planning capacity, so resources can be right-sized on an ongoing basis.”
Anthony Cusimano, director of solutions marketing at Object First, notes that cost is a common consideration, especially for organisations with smaller storage requirements. “While the model allows a lower barrier to entry shifts costs from CapEx to OpEx, ongoing subscription fees and add-on services can add up over time,” he says. “Businesses should take a comprehensive approach to financial modelling, factoring in operational efficiency, scalability and compliance benefits — rather than focusing solely on price per terabyte.”
Security
Of course, security is paramount and one of the biggest concerns for customers, but StaaS is very secure.
Stewart says leading StaaS offerings deliver enterprise-grade encryption, both in transit and at rest, role-based access control and comprehensive monitoring. “For many organisations, moving to a reputable StaaS provider improves security versus managing storage internally, where patching, updates and threat detection can lag,” he says.
Muhammad notes that providers are constantly rolling out new updates to keep the data safe and provide rapid responses to emerging threats. “For example, Lenovo is deploying AI-powered ransomware protection in their StaaS facilities, something that would be out of reach for most organisations to implement independently,” he says.
“This allows StaaS customers to operate with confidence and focus on their core offer while leaving data security in the reliable hands of their StaaS partner.”
But it is important to establish that traffic between the storage array and cloud management systems deploys a zero trust security framework with certificate authentication and encrypted communication to establish the secure tunnel, Adam notes. “After connectivity has been established, all traffic over the internet is encrypted and the user data always stays on the array safely in the data centre,” he adds.
Harry warns that using StaaS does expand the surface area for attacks. “It is certainly a more secure option than most, but as with most things, there is always a risk,” he notes.
Overcoming concerns
Security is a common concern that business owners have about StaaS, among others, and resellers need to work to overcome these.
Markus says that partners need to make sure they know exactly how the supplier provides assurance on compliance and security. “It needs to be absolutely clear for the end customer,” he adds. “Case studies, customer references and testimonials will help. But knowing about the StaaS provider and its technical capabilities and the guarantees it provides is important.”
Also, resellers must recognise that customers need to have the right workload in the right location at the right cost profile. “Customers may sometimes start with ‘cloud first’ ambitions, but the best resellers don’t just facilitate, they advise and challenge,” Adam says. “Hybrid cloud deployments can be complex, a mix of on-premises, co-location and cloud with myriad data types and challenges over virtualisation, cyber resiliency and legacy debt. The question for customers and therefore partners is how to gain universal management and control over these workloads? Without this a customer will never be able to leverage their own data for intelligence via AI.”
Muhammad agrees that giving up direct control over data can be intimidating for businesses. “But reputable StaaS providers that provide transparency on their security practices, sovereignty commitments and compliance support can help built trust with consumers,” he says. “Latency can also be a concern, but this is usually only experienced by businesses with data-heavy workflows requiring constant access to large files. In this case, tiered storage solutions can substantially mitigate the impact.”
Stewart adds that resellers can provide proof points, such as compliance certifications, security audit results and customer success stories. “They should also offer clear SLAs and transparent cost models to address fears of hidden charges or vendor lock-in,” he says. “Education is key – walking customers through the shared responsibility model helps them understand exactly what’s managed by the provider and what remains their role.”
But Stewart notes that while StaaS offers compelling advantages, businesses must not underestimate the complexities of managing data at scale. “Massive data volumes bring challenges in performance optimisation, data migration, backup windows and recovery speeds,” he says.
“Due diligence is critical – the resilience of the underlying hardware, the maturity of the software platform and the provider’s operational processes all determine how well the service will perform when it matters most. Without careful vetting, businesses risk unexpected bottlenecks, escalating costs or compliance shortfalls.”
Future
It is anticipated that demand for StaaS will continue to grow in the next 12-24 months. “Cloud spending on the whole is on the rise, and every customer of ours has committed to removing their on-premises servers before 2030,” says Harry. “StaaS is an incredibly simple cloud service to adopt and requires almost no user training. Equally, businesses are holding more data every year and need a more modern solution for this.”
Markus anticipates that growth will be fuelled as SMBs gain confidence in the technology. “For SMBs, a simple managed backup option is extremely attractive,” he says. “It’s one of the options that’s being used in hybrid infrastructures and as confidence continues to grow in cloud-based services, more organisations will want to take advantage of the flexibility and cost-efficiency it provides.”
Anthony anticipates organisations will pivot from traditional storage to a service-based model. “As data continues to grow across multi-cloud environments, StaaS will become a cornerstone of IT strategies because it offers the flexibility of cloud with the control of on-premises,” he says. “Advancements such as AI-driven management and analytics will further enhance efficiency, while built-in resilience features will ensure organisations are protected against increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats.”
Adam sees great traction for StaaS, whether as part of a larger scale digital transformation, or as part of a private cloud (HCI) deployment. “We are finding private cloud solutions delivered as a service (via HPE GreenLake) have become incredibly compelling to customers,” he says. “Given the headwinds in the hypervisor market and with HPE Morpheus VME now embedded, we expect continued growth as customers seek to tackle three of the key hybrid cloud challenges concurrently – legacy debt, cyber resiliency and virtualisation optimisation.
“For our partners, this represents a major opportunity with StaaS being a channel-first play by nature, opening the door to recurring revenue, lifecycle services, and differentiated offerings around security, backup and data governance.”
