Tata Communications expands flagship IZO cloud enablement platform

 Tata Communications launches IZO^TM Cloud Storage, a simple and scalable storage service portfolio, adding to its game-changing IZO™ cloud enablement platform. Underpinned by the world's largest wholly-owned subsea cable network, IZO^TM Cloud Storage is designed to address enterprises’ complex storage demands, as the volume of unstructured data – such as videos, social media posts, images, emails and customer details – is set to constitute 80% of the 125 Exabytes of data generated by organisations in 2017.

The new storage service portfolio aims to support enterprises’ hybrid cloud adoption by combining network connectivity, cloud storage and data security. This eliminates the cost and complexity of working with a multitude of different storage software providers, network vendors and systems integrators, making the once difficult task of managing multiple storage environments – be it long-term data retention or high performance storage – much simpler.

“As data volumes continue to skyrocket while data retention and sovereignty regulations across industries tighten, companies today face three major challenges: cost, complexity and security,” says Genius Wong, President of Global Network, Cloud and Data Centre Services at Tata Communications. “Powered by our unparalleled global network, IZO^TM Cloud Storage tackles each of these challenges in a simple yet ingenious way. Expanding our IZO^TM platform with cloud storage capabilities is part of our mission to provide CIOs with the ability to manage every aspect of their cloud infrastructure as one.”

According to Ovum, the IT environment is changing rapidly from a simple on-premise capability to a hybrid cloud arrangement where data needs to be available for these cloud workloads. Organisations demand higher levels of system and network availability, and cost-effective storage; however, all this must be managed and maintained by one department with one IT budget, creating tensions between conflicting demands and priorities. “The growth of public cloud storage offerings is adding to this complexity and has fuelled the rise in ‘shadow IT’ – where line of business customers bypass the CIO and procure storage services themselves,” says Roy Illsley, Principal Analyst, IT Solutions at Ovum. “The market needs a simple solution that can be used by all users and meets the needs of operating in an increasingly hybrid cloud environment, but importantly making sure the corporate data is secured according to the corporate governance policies.”

Many industries  are under increasing pressure to find new scalable and safe ways to store sensitive data. For example, owing to the adoption of 4K technology, there is an enormous amount of data generated in the media and entertainment industry. In many countries banks are also required to store their records for at least seven years to ensure regulatory compliance. And, hospitals require huge amounts of storage capacity for X-rays, ECGs and radiology images. Finally, ecommerce businesses need to store large amounts of data to ensure a seamless customer experience.

IZO^TM Cloud Storage offers businesses unlimited storage capacity in Tata Communications’ owned and associated data centres in India, Singapore, Hong Kong and the UK, and enables the end-to-end management of data over the company’s global network.

The new service is also infinitely scalable, as enterprises are able to store unlimited amounts of data on a pay-as-you-grow basis with no CAPEX investment. And, unlike with many existing solutions, businesses will not have to pay extra for accessing or modifying their data, ensuring predictability of storage costs.

Furthermore, with up to  99.9% data availability, integration with Tata Communications’ managed security portfolio, and the fact that data stored within IZO^TM Cloud Storage is spread across a ring network of data centres in each geography, the new storage service portfolio ensures data security and sovereignty even in the most tightly regulated industries.