Hey, everybody, it's Joe from 45 Drives, it's time for another tech tip Tuesday, and today we're going to talk about storage-as-a-service or STaaS.

What is STaaS? STaaS stands for storage-as-a-service, and it's part of the whole trend towards renting or subscribing to some sort of IT infrastructure, which probably started with software-as-a-service or SaaS. Let's come back to STaaS in a little while. But first, let's talk about why it exists in the first place.

We all know what cloud storage is, so I'm not going to dive into that. Instead, let's talk about why people like the cloud. Now, first of all, someone else takes care of it. There's somebody somewhere that's managing that infrastructure for you. And of course, it scales so easily, there's nothing you have to do. And it moves the expenditure from CapEx to OpEx, which your accountants will absolutely love.

So what does that mean? Instead of it being a very large chunk of cash (a capital expenditure), it's a monthly operating expense. And so, it's easier on cash flow. And of course, you can expense that monthly instead of having to depreciate it over years. It's something that really works well from the business perspective, but it's got some serious shortcomings.

First of all, it's insanely expensive if you've got any consequential amount of data, and especially if you have to download that data. The public Internet is your bottleneck. Let's say you have to download 10 terabytes. A really good public connection (no dedicated line) is about 1.5gigs a second. So do the math on your own. But by my calculations, that's like two days to download 10 terabytes. And that's not a lot of data. And of course, there are privacy concerns.

And yes, there are a lot of really intelligent people making sure that nobody gets access to your data. But you know what? There's also a lot of really intelligent people trying to figure out how to get around those systems and how to get access to your data.

So how do you take advantage of all the good things that come with the cloud? The operating expense versus a capital expense, the ease of management because somebody else is taking care of it and the smooth, easy expansion and growth — without the serious disadvantages?

The answer is 45 Drives new STaaS offering. We put the hardware on your site, we set it up, we monitor it. We deal with any issues just like the cloud. We grow it when you need it to grow, just like the cloud. And, you move your expenditures from CapEx to OpEx, just like the cloud.

So what's different? Well, what's different is the equipment is on your site. It's going to be way, way faster. And you don't have to worry about privacy concerns.

It'll cost you a whole lot less. Like a whole lot less. Just take a look at this chart showing how much more affordable STaaS is compared to the cloud.

Oh, and you can cancel at any time. We'll just send someone in to pick up the equipment. We can provide you with a copy of KillDisk so you can wipe your data off the drives. Or we'll do it for you and provide you with the certificates.

It's a smart way to do things for a lot of companies. Let's talk. Just shoot us a note at info@45drives.com. Let's find out if storage-as-a-service is right for you.