Cloud storage has one glaring weakness compared with traditional storage offerings; it does not get cheaper over time. Today, some services each year will increase your capacity at "no extra charge," but you are still paying the same amount of money for data written last year and data written this year.If you think about it, that just does not make sense. Data written last year is far less likely to be accessed or referenced than data you wrote yesterday. Why should you pay the same amount for that storage? This is again another area where the back end architecture of the cloud solution is critical. Cloud storage, or any storage solution, for that matter, should have the ability to move data to less and less expensive storage. That could be higher density but slower disk drives or, depending on access needs, even some other form of media like optical or even tape.

To further drive down their costs and your monthly fee, the architecture also should allow for lower energy consumption as data ages. They should have the ability to take advantage of drives that can spin down or even a system that has the intelligence to completely power the drive off -- nothing is more green than off.

Powering down drives is just the start. The node or shelf that holds these drives consume a fair amount of power. The ability to completely power down nodes within the architecture will help further drive down the cost of storing older data. Even manufacturers without the grid-like architecture that seems to be common in cloud storage should look at the ability to power down drive shelves that are full of powered-down drives. The most important part of all of this is automation. Regardless if it is a public cloud, private cloud, or disk-based archive, these solutions are going to be just too large to expect the user to keep up with managing data movement and power management. The system itself is going to need to automatically decide where data should be placed and how the power should be managed in those environments. Eventually these systems should include a built-in billing system that will charge users based on the different classes of storage they are using.

Cloud services always will need to be cost competitive. Suppliers that have in their road map the ability to automatically move data to less expensive power-managed media are going to be able to better maintain that price advantage. When you look at the architecture, make sure you look for solutions that allow data to become less expensive with age.

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George Crump is founder of Storage Switzerland, an analyst firm focused on the virtualization and storage marketplaces. It provides strategic consulting and analysis to storage users, suppliers, and integrators. An industry veteran of more than 25 years, Crump has held engineering and sales positions at various IT industry manufacturers and integrators. Prior to Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest integrators.