On-prem storage peeps. Come here. It's time for real talk. About Google

Comment Veritas, Symantec’s renamed and soon to be spun off storage biz, announced it’s supporting Google’s nearline cloud storage.

Its Veritas NetBackup 7.7, now in beta with general availability planned for the summer, can back up data to Google Cloud Storage Nearline. Here’s Veritas supporting cloud disks as an archival target alternative to tape.

It says its product, through its OST layer, can “monitor and manage all backup information, regardless of location – disk, tape or cloud.” It will manage when and how data is moved from on-premises disk to Goog’s cloud, saying “the hybrid cloud model is the new norm inside of the enterprise.”

Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh, whose rival product offering works with Amazon Web Services, doubts if Google understands enterprise needs, saying: “I don’t think Google understands the enterprise. [It’s] OK at slideware. Google thinks of enterprise as a large consumer.” It doesn’t understand enterprise needs like SLAs, and he’s more likely to extend his product’s offering to Azure than Google.

Having said that, he's convinced IT is going to the public cloud.

Putting that view to one side for a moment, for Google, Veritas is an onramp for big biz into its cloud, just like NetApp’s SteelStore gateway. Iron Mountain is another Goog cloud storage support act. For large data uploads, you can physically send hard drives, storing data on rust, to Iron Mountain (how appropriate) which can then upload them to the cloud.

Look, guys and gals

Let’s put forward an extreme view: look people, don’t you realise? Google has absolutely no interest in the hybrid cloud. It has no skin in that game. You do. One way or another, every enterprise data storage systems and service provider has skin in the hybrid cloud/enterprise data centre and end-point storage game. Google does not. It is public cloud through and through.

Amazon is, too. Azure is Microsoft's skin in the public cloud game. Redmond knew what it had to do to stay at the top table.

Public cloud service providers (CSPs) are modern-day Hoovers and Dysons, sucking up data and applications, and leaving nothing in their place but empty spaces and trashed on-premises-dependent business dreams.

Extreme view of enterprise IT future

Just as soon as high-speed data networks to the cloud get built and become affordable, and the CSPs adopt proper SLA religion, all on-premises data storage system businesses will look like dodos. They’re going to be as dead as on-premises power generation, as buggy whips, as any other abandoned tech when a new technology or business model overwhelmed it.

The public cloud is the biggest threat facing on-premises data storage.

Nah, nah, too extreme. Never gonna happen. Business doesn’t trust the cloud that much. Get real. The cloud is insecure, unreliable, costs too much in the long run. Talking out the back of your silly ignorant head. What do you know, mere scribe?

OK, so I scribble on the back of envelopes, but sometimes my scribbles mirror what’s inside the letter. Care to have a bet? Against Bezos? ®