Did you know that more than 80% of enterprises embarked on a hybrid Cloud strategy in 2015? That is true according to a Rightscale survey reports Steve Uniack  for IBM’s Thoughts on Cloud blog. This also took place in a world with ever-growing data – much of it unstructured – creating new demands on storage.  So how do you now adjust your Cloud Storage Strategy as your company’s data grows?

Mr. Uniack recommends that you evaluate your company to create a Cloud Storage strategy that enables you to be “agile” in order to tackle not only growing data but also new data sources. “Start with identifying the storage use cases for your workloads,” writes Mr. Uniack. Below are what he considers to be “high-value” storage opportunities:

• Back up and archive
• Disaster recovery or data recovery
• Storage bursting
• Collaboration
• Unstructured data
• Analytics

Each of the above utilizes the cloud to bring your company flexibility and scale as you need it. He adds, “A Successful Cloud Storage strategy includes not just the use of public cloud storage, but also techniques that reduce costs and provide business agility using private and hybrid cloud approaches.” Mr. Uniack also gives specific examples of effective cloud storage strategies. Here are a few of note:

• Virtualizing on-premises storage environments to drive utilization and provide a foundation for automation
• Automating the placement and movement of data to the right storage platform at the right time based on demand and service levels
• Employing compression and deduplication solutions to store and do more with less

Cloud storage has the ability to offer your company more agility to move, plan and react to changing data demands but it first starts with developing a solid strategy.