Jean Paul Getty was an oil man. At one time, he was listed by Forbes as the richest American alive. Worth billions, Getty had a simple motto when it came to buying versus leasing: anything that appreciates in value should be bought. Anything that depreciates in value should not be purchased. Though Getty was no technology man, the principle serves well in all of business, including in the arena of business cloud storage.
OpEx Means Your Business Doesn’t Take the Hit on Depreciation
OpEx expenses don’t require a long process of gaining approval for the expense. It’s low cost, usually paid monthly, and can be expanded or shrunk any time storage needs within the organization change.
The hardware and software needed to operate a data center don’t appreciate in value. As soon as you invest in this equipment, it begins to lose value, eventually becoming completely outdated and a hassle to decommission safely, efficiently, and in a way that is kind to the environment. STaaS, or Storage as a Service, follows this brilliant billionaire’s money-saving philosophy: instead of buying storage and having it depreciate, pay as you go and save your business that hit in depreciation. Not to mention, with STaaS, you will always be running on current hardware and software versions.
OpEx is Easier & Faster to Get Approved
Datacenter purchases, like any large capital expense, typically have to go through lengthy and difficult approval processes. The CFO writing the checks doesn’t know (or care) about things like NAS, SAN, RAID and the differences between block, file, and object storage. Usually, the CFO assumes the techies deliberately spout gibberish so that they can ask for ridiculous sums of money and nobody really understands where it’s going. Conversely, operational expenses for business cloud storage are lower. They require little or no approval, and the IT department that knows and understands their options can make the best determination about what they need and where to get the best value.
STaaS on the OpEx Budget Takes the Risk Out of Long-Term Planning
Another huge benefit to shifting storage expenses from the CapEx to the OpEx side of the budget is that it eliminates the inherent risk in capacity planning. Determining what your storage needs and budget should be five years out is risky, especially in an era in which data is growing exponentially and is an increasingly important part of a business’ overall strategy. With STaaS, your storage can be expanded and contracted as needed. You no longer have to depend on a crystal ball to determine what your storage needs will be 2, 3, 5, or 10 years from now. Business cloud storage is elastic, you get more when you need it, and let it go when you don’t.
STaaS is Faster to Acquire
What if you’re wrong about the amount of storage your business will need five years from now? With business cloud storage on the OpEx budget, it won’t matter. You get what you need when you need it, and you can get storage quickly, without long processes of planning, acquisition, and installation.
STaaS is faster to deploy. It used to take months or years to plan for the future capacity and infrastructural needs of the data center, select the right vendor’s products and equipment, and implement the solutions. STaaS makes it fast and easy to get additional storage and pay for it by the month. No lengthy approval processes, no explaining what the storage requirements are to non-techies, and no risky long-term investments.
STaaS is More Flexible Than Buying and Leasing
With STaaS, you can’t get it wrong. Not only do you not have to worry about how much capacity you need, you also don’t need to worry about the protocol or data type. STaaS is a universal storage solution, so if you want to switch from block to file, or private to public cloud, you can do so very easily.
Learn more about how STaaS and moving storage costs to the OpEx side of the ledger can benefit your business today when you download our latest analyst paper: Zadara Storage Voted by IT Pros as On-Premise Enterprise Storage-as-a-Service Market Leader. 
