Traditional storage has ruled the data center for over three decades. This has historically come with large CapEx expenditures, usually meaning you initially purchase more storage than you need so that you aren’t faced with another data center upgrade in a couple of years. But the traditional storage model isn’t working anymore. Like Uber has upended the taxi cab industry; smartphones have stumped the sales of products like alarm clocks and cameras; and music streaming services have revolutionized the music industry — universal storage is turning traditional storage on its head. Here’s why.
Universal Storage Can be Categorized as a OpEx Expense
OpEx expenses are easier to get approved, plus they usually end up costing less over the lifetime of the product. The future business model for most tech products is leaning towards OpEx.
Let’s start with the STaaS, or Storage-as-a-Service, model. Traditional data stores came with large capital expenditures. Companies had to invest in the hardware, software, and manpower to install and maintain these massive storage systems. Since investments were so huge, it was necessary to buy much more capacity than was currently needed, because otherwise you’d be right back in the market for more storage capacity in a few years. The universal storage solution by Zadara allows you to move those storage expenses to the OpEx side of the ledger. Spending goes down, while performance and capacity go up. It’s a rare win-win for the IT department and the business.
Universal, All-in-One Storage Offers Pay-as-You-Go Pricing
One of the reasons that you can shift universal storage from CapEx to OpEx is because you pay as you go. You order only the storage capacity you need, only when it’s needed. You pay only for what you actually use, and you can change that capacity any time you need to. As you grow and take on new projects, you can get additional capacity within minutes (not weeks or months). When projects wind down or your business needs to cut costs, you can scale down capacity just as easily. Even with on-premises storage, there is no huge cost for acquiring more hardware or taking on the ongoing maintenance of the storage.
Store Data in Any Location
Whether you want to keep your data in-house and onsite, or are ready to move to the public or private cloud, or opt for the in-between hybrid cloud — Zadara has you covered.
With the Zadara solution, you can keep all of your data on premises, move it to the public or private cloud, or opt for the popular hybrid solution. Even with onsite storage, where all of your data is kept securely under your roof, you don’t have to pay for massive infrastructural upgrades, hardware purchases, or additional staff to keep it maintained.
Store Any Type of Data in Any Protocol
What type(s) of data do you need to store? Block? Not a problem. File? Sure. Object? Definitely! With the Zadara solution you can store any of these data types. Additionally, you can take on data in any protocol, including FC-SCSI, iSCSI, iSER, NFS, CIFS, S3 and Swift.
To learn even more about the differences in traditional storage and the Zadara solution, download the ‘STaaS vs. Traditional Storage’ infographic now. 
