Historically, the projected monthly cost of solutions that require indefinite storage would grow linearly based on the space requirements of the application. However, as the amount of data in the cloud grows exponentially, managing the costs of expanding storage needs has become a significant challenge for organizations of all sizes.

Thanks to Microsoft’s recent release of Azure Blob Storage Archive Tier, organizations now have a more cost-effective way of keeping large data sets in the cloud for longer periods of time.

What is Azure Blob-Level Tiering?

Blob-Level Tiering enables customers to optimize storage costs by easily managing the lifecycle of their data across three tiers based on usage patterns. These three tiers include Hot, Cool, and the recently released Archive storage tier.

• Azure Hot Storage tier: Used for storing data that is regularly accessed. Customers pay higher storage costs, but lower access costs.
• Azure Cool Storage tier: Used for storing data that is infrequently accessed. Customers pay lower storage costs, but higher access costs.
• Azure Archive Storage tier: This new tier was created for the type of data that is rarely, if ever, used. Customers can now pay an even lower storage cost, with higher data retrieval costs for the rare occasion that they need to access this data.

In conjunction with Azure Archive Storage, Microsoft is also releasing blob-level tiering, which allows customers to easily change the access tier of a single object between the Hot, Cool, or Archive tiers as usage patterns change, without having to move data between accounts.

What Does This Mean for My Business?

Managing cloud storage can be a complex subject, but the latest release of Azure Archive Storage Tier essentially comes down to is big potential cost savings for your business. As you migrate on-premises and IaaS solutions to PaaS, Azure Blob Storage will become an essential component to handling your storage needs. Starting at just $0.002 per gigabyte per month, the Archive Tier can potentially save your organization 90% of the cost of using the Hot tier alone.

Beyond cost savings, advancements in data analytics and artificial intelligence are unlocking value from data that might have previously been discarded. By leveraging Blob-Level tiering, you can more affordably and efficiently store data that could be leveraged to improve decision making and innovate your products and services now and in the future.

Incorporating Azure Blob Storage into Your Cloud Roadmap Strategy

Simply moving data that is rarely used into the Azure Blob Archive Tier is not enough to realize the full business value of Microsoft’s new cloud storage pricing structure. Customers should also be thinking about how this impacts the long-term roadmap of their applications. For mission-critical applications, it is no longer acceptable to plan the archival process after the cost of storage has already spun out of control. Organizations should have a strategy for how they will handle the growth of the application from both the user perspective and from the data perspective, from the beginning.

If you’re looking for a strategic partner to help you architect your cloud solutions for stability, performance, and lowest recurring costs, contact us to learn more about our cloud roadmap strategy.