Cost Efficiency of Hybrid Cloud Storage : Shortening Acquisition Cycle to Mitigate Volume Variation

Hybrid cloud storage infrastructure, which combines cost-effective but inflexible private resources and flexible but premium-priced public cloud storage, allows organizations to operate cost-efficiently under demand volume uncertainty. The extant literature, however, offers a limited analytical insight into the effect that the variation of demand has on the cost-efficient mix of internal and external resources. This paper considers the storage capacity acquisition cycle, i.e. the interval at which the organization re-assesses and acquires additional resources, as a parameter shaping the optimal mix of resources. It introduces a model capturing the compound effect of the acquisition cycle an…