Sovereign Cloud Services Market Opportunity

Data sovereignty and sovereign clouds have taken on a new significance in the world today. As organizations around the world generate troves of data, they are keenly aware of the need to manage, store and secure this valuable asset as well as comply with the sovereignty laws of the land where this data resides.

Capitalize on the growing market for sovereign data protection and storage services with a solution purpose-built to meet your service delivery needs. Cloud services revenues are expected to more than double over the next four years (IDC), creating an unprecedented business opportunity. VMware, Veeam, and Cloudian together offer a proven solution that makes it easy to get started. 

Service Options

With a combined solution including Veeam, Cloudian, and VMware, service providers are positioned to offer their customers a variety of high-value-add data management services in a sovereign cloud environment:

Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS): Deliver an integrated backup solution tailored to meet the client’s RPO/RTO needs

Archive-as-a-Service (AaaS): Offer a long-term data repository for infrequently
used data

Ransomware Protection-as-a-Service (RPaaS): Help customers avoid the risks of business and organizational disruptions resulting from ransomware attacks by maintaining an immutable backup copy protected by the industry-leading S3 Object Lock implementation

Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS): Provide S3-compatible storage capacity on a subscription basis to help customers address their growing volumes of data

Figure 1. Data Protection for Sovereign Cloud

Profitable Business Model

Offer services with high margin potential and low startup costs. Cloudian and Veeam scale with demand, so you can manage cash flow by matching revenues and expenses. Start small and scale non-disruptively.

Total operating costs for Cloudian storage are typically less than 1/3 of public cloud pricing, which keeps your infrastructure costs down and margins up. Deploy the complete solution via VMware Cloud Director for efficient, single-point management and a low-touch, self-service model.

For storage as a service, Cloudian supports all software that employs the S3 API, giving your customers access to the growing ecosystem of S3-compatible applications. As the industry’s most interoperable platform, Cloudian helps you keep support costs down and user satisfaction high. 

“From a business standpoint, Cloudian and VMware are helping us compete with the largest public cloud providers on a level playing field.”

Peter Zafiris, Senior Infrastructure Engineer, AUCloud

Integrated Components for Streamlined Management 

VMware Cloud Director: Deploy and manage an end-to-end solution — including Veeam and Cloudian — from a single screen. Clients also gain self-service, single point control, ensuring simple management and high customer satisfaction.  

Veeam Backup and Replication: Offer a rich suite of data protection services delivering fast, efficient backup. Restore directly from HyperStore without the need to rehydrate primary backup data, thereby ensuring fast Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). 

Cloudian HyperStore: Keep service levels high and costs low with this scalable, S3-compatible storage system. Start small and grow to match revenues and expenses. Cloudian offers multi-tenancy, metering, billing and QoS features that give you control and predictable service delivery. Deploy either as appliances or as software defined storage within your VMware cluster.  

Configurable for Multiple Service Options

Offer the configuration that best meets your client’s objectives.

Data Protection: Deploy Veeam at the client’s site or at your site to meet performance and cost demands. Cloudian provides a shared, scalable backup target. VMware Cloud Director enables single-screen management, end-to-end.

S3-Compatible Storage: Leverage shared, scalable storage for your client’s multiple use cases, such as data backup, Splunk or Greenplum data lake, M&E archives, custom S3-compatible applications, and more.

Hybrid Cloud-Ready: For performance sensitive use cases, deploy Cloudian at the client site, with automatic replication to your site.    

Service Provider Feature Set

Multi-tenancy: Role-based access control for both the Veeam and Cloudian platforms

Secure: Data-at-rest is secured with support for AES 256-bit encryption. Support for HTTPS, SSL and other encrypted connection mechanisms secures data-in-motion. 

Quality of Service: Manage service level agreements with bandwidth controls, thereby ensuring a consistent customer experience.

Billing: Usage-based billing is built into the storage system, allowing VMware Cloud MSPs to generate client billing information with selected usage parameters. 

Learn more at cloudian.com/sovereign-cloud.

At A Glance

Veeam and Cloudian offer a complete data protection solution, managed from within VMware Cloud Director. 

Ideal for packaged offerings, the best-in-class feature set along with integrated management ensure rapid deployment and a profitable business model. 

Solution Elements

  • VMware Cloud Director
  • Veeam Backup and Replication
  • Cloudian HyperStore 

Key Benefits

Economical to operate
  • Deploy and manage Veeam and Cloudian via VMware Cloud Director
  • Part of the VMware Cloud Provider Program – purchase storage with points
  • Native integration between Veeam and Cloudian via Cloud Tier
Service provider feature set
  • Multi-tenancy 
  • Billing
  • QoS 
Modular and simple to grow
  • Exabyte scalability 
  • Small starting point
Choice of storage deployment options
  • Consumption model (software-defined-storage)
  • Pre-configured appliances

Business Opportunity in Storage Services

Growing market

  • $50B Infrastructure as a Service opportunity (2020) (IDC Storage Report 2018)
  • Revenue forecasted to double by 2023

Proven business model

  • Margin potential in excess of 50%
  • Software-defined-storage solutions available for zero cap-ex deployment
  • Consumption model pricing
  • Match revenues and expenses

Efficient management

  • VMware Cloud Director integration for single screen management
  • Self-service management for clients

Scalable business

  • Exabyte-scalable storage infrastructure
  • Non-disruptive expansion
  • Shared storage for multiple services offerings
  • Low-touch management keeps costs down