Although SSPs offer many benefits, entering this young market is not for everyone. A variety of factors, including type of business, security needs, and budget, must be considered when evaluating a data-storage outsourcer. Obviously, your affinity for an SSP will depend largely on your organization. For example, businesses that maintain internal datacenters, but that have not had the resources to accommodate unusual growth, are ripe for an SSP that can manage storage solutions on-site. For traditional backups across common communication channels, these SSPs can put managed storage switches in front of backup systems to maintain security.
Economic factors influence every lease vs. buy decision.
SSPs cite several factors in their favor, including reduced downtime and fewer employees. By downgrading data-storage costs to just another business expense, SSPs can help insulate customers from technical obsolescence and capital asset depreciation. Given that the SSP market is in its infancy, it's no surprise that only 3 percent of respondents to the InfoWorld Enterprise Storage survey currently use an SSP and that two-thirds of respondents were not familiar with SSPs at all. A good deal of misconception exists in this market, especially concerning the location of primary data stores. Many IT managers erroneously believe that to use an SSP, they must relinquish their data to an off-site facility.