Where are our cloud data stored? Starting from this omnipresent question coming from any client, here is a personal point of view related to dispersion power of IaaS vendors providers to cover worldwide market, starting from datacenters location around to the Globe.

Less than two months ago Gartner released „Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Storage Services, Worldwide”,  the most recent evaluation of public cloud storage providers. In this area the trends are very clear: the public cloud storage services market is drive by a quick evolution, being dominated by worldwide scale vendors. Until end of 2016, “60% of global companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud, up from than 20% in 2014” according Gartner estimation.

In a very strong competitive media, which could be the evaluation criteria when we are watching to public cloud storage providers? One of easiest way is to look to the offering price, but this is becoming high difficult because we are stepping on the hot battlefield of prices, with spectacular evolution after each strategic movements of key vendors.

Looking to the Gartner’s definition: “Public cloud storage is infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that provides object storage services through a REST API using Internet protocols. The service is stand-alone with no requirement for additional managed services. Vendors supply their core storage services off-premises, and include on-demand, elastic storage capabilities in a self-service model. The service price is based on capacity, data transfer and/or other access requests.”

Which metrics are governing capacity, data transfer and other access issues? These should be related to the access capabilities on the Internet or dedicated network connectivity? Starting from here, and to regional access to storage servers, my curiosity was to put on a Globe map the location of the most important datacenters, as mentioned in the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant survey.

The results are only pictographic and my intention is not related to any hierarchic stratification starting from this. Datacenters location are according Google research and vendor’s public data. Any omission is totally accidental.