SoftNAS SmartTiers Cost Savings Calculator for Public Cloud Storage

SoftNAS, Inc. announced availability of a simple-to-use but cost-savings calculator for public cloud storage called SmartTiers Cost Savings Calculator.

The calculator is able to show customers how much they can potentially save on storage costs from public cloud vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure by using the automated storage tiering feature of SoftNAS Cloud 4.

As noted in the Data Age 2025 white paper ⁽¹⁾ (sponsored by Seagate Technology plc ), IDC forecasts that by 2025 the total worldwide data will balloon in size to 163ZB.

For companies looking to store data in the public cloud, balancing cost, availability and performance presents a challenge.

Being able to calculate the optimal amount of public cloud storage costs based on specific use cases will become a critical component for determining what applications and data will be moved into the cloud. The tool, which is free of charge and accessible from the company’s website, is intended to help companies pinpoint and quantify the storage cost savings associated with moving their applications and data from on-premises datacenter environments into the public cloud.

The SmartTiers cost savings calculator provides customers with a simple interface for entering in a few key data points and then dynamically presenting in graphical form what the cost for public cloud storage would be both with and without using it, as well as, the potential savings that could be achieved with SmartTiers. After filling out the registration form, users also receive detailed email reports. The multi-page detailed report breaks down the potential costs and savings over a three-year period.

SoftNAS Cloud 4 advanced storage auto-tiering feature: SmartTiers
SmartTiers is a patent pending, automated storage tiering feature that delivers optimal price/performance for cloud storage that moves aging data from more expensive, high-performance block/SSD storage to less expensive object storage, according to customer-set policies, reducing public cloud storage costs by up to 67% and is currently available for beta testing. Object storage is up to twenty times less expensive than SSD storage in the cloud. SmartTiers cost savings calculator quickly pinpoints how much the company can save customers while continuing to deliver top-notch performance results.

“The SoftNAS SmartTiers Cost Savings Calculator demonstrates that users of SoftNAS Cloud 4 can potentially realize significant savings on their public cloud storage costs from cloud infrastructure vendors like AWS and Azure. SoftNAS has delivered a cloud breakthrough with its automated storage tiering technology (SmartTiers) and the web-based tool that allows companies to plug in their own numbers to test various storage tiering options for maximum cost savings – not just with one public cloud vendor’s storage options but between different cloud storage vendors,” said George Crump, president and founder, Storage Switzerland LLC.

“SoftNAS Cloud 4 provides the unique ability to save customers up to two-thirds of their public cloud storage costs, without sacrificing application performance. SmartTiers is such a game-changing capability that customers are telling us that without SmartTiers, they can’t afford to move large applications and data into the cloud. The new calculator makes that business calculus fast and easy, and SmartTiers paves the way for customers to both save money and get the performance they need in the public cloud. It’s the difference between cloud storage being affordable versus a non-starter compared to on-premises for many customers,” said Rick Braddy, CEO and founder, SoftNAS.

The company’s Cloud 4 is available in three product editions that run on AWS, Microsoft Azure and vSphere. With the release, customers can launch all the firm’s cloud products on-demand, directly from the AWS and Azure Marketplaces to spin up cloud data solutions with SmartTiers in just minutes with no prior purchasing approvals..

⁽¹⁾ Data Age 2025 IDC April 2017 (white paper)