What is Storage as a Service?
Storage as a Service (STaaS) is a procurement and delivery model for enterprise storage infrastructure. Rather than purchasing storage hardware outright — with the capital expenditure, depreciation, and refresh cycles that involves — organisations pay a monthly or annual subscription for a defined amount of storage capacity, performance, and support.
Unlike public cloud storage, Fortuna Data's STaaS model delivers the storage hardware on-premise at your site. Your data never leaves your building. You get the financial predictability of a subscription model and the performance, security, and data sovereignty of on-premise infrastructure.
Storage as a Service (STaaS) means you pay a monthly fee for enterprise storage capacity rather than buying hardware outright. With Fortuna Data, the hardware sits on-premise at your site — so you get OpEx pricing without losing data sovereignty or performance.
CapEx vs OpEx: Why STaaS Makes Financial Sense
Traditional storage procurement requires a significant upfront capital investment — hardware, installation, support contracts, and then a refresh cycle every three to five years. This creates unpredictable peaks in IT spend and often results in organisations over-provisioning to avoid running out of capacity before the next refresh.
STaaS converts that capital expenditure into a predictable operational cost. You pay for what you need, scale when you need more, and avoid the sunk cost of hardware that may be partially underutilised for the first year of a five-year term.
Buy the hardware
- Large upfront capital outlay
- Depreciation over 3–5 years
- Over-provisioning to cover growth
- Refresh cycle every 3–5 years
- Support contracts renewed separately
- Unpredictable spend profile
Subscribe to capacity
- No upfront capital expenditure
- Predictable monthly cost
- Scale capacity as you grow
- Support included in subscription
- Hardware refresh managed by Fortuna Data
- Data stays on-premise
Want to compare the total cost of STaaS against a traditional storage purchase for your specific requirements? We'll run the numbers for you.
Get a cost comparison →What's Included in Fortuna Data's STaaS
On-premise hardware
Enterprise storage from Seagate, IBM, Lenovo and other leading vendors — installed and configured at your site, not a third-party data centre.
Full support included
Hardware support, monitoring and maintenance included in the subscription. No separate support contracts to manage or renew.
Scalable capacity
Add storage capacity as your requirements grow without new procurement cycles or capital approvals. Scale up within your existing subscription framework.
All-flash or hybrid
Choose the right storage tier for your workload — high-performance all-flash for latency-sensitive applications or hybrid for bulk data at lower cost.
UK data sovereignty
Your data stays in your building, under your control, on infrastructure you can physically access. Full compliance with UK GDPR data residency requirements.
Hardware refresh managed
At the end of the subscription term, hardware is refreshed to the latest generation — no separate refresh project, no capital approval, no disruption.
STaaS vs Cloud Storage
Many organisations initially consider public cloud storage (Azure Blob, AWS S3) as an alternative to buying storage hardware. At small volumes, cloud storage is genuinely cost-effective. At petabyte scale, the economics reverse sharply — and at any scale, public cloud storage means your data leaves your building.
Fortuna Data's STaaS model gives you the financial model of cloud (monthly subscription, no upfront CapEx) while keeping data on-premise with the performance, latency, and sovereignty advantages that entails. It's particularly well-suited to organisations that need cloud-like financial treatment for storage but cannot or do not want to send their data to a third-party data centre.
For a full UK cost comparison between cloud and on-premise storage at petabyte scale, see our petabyte cost comparison page.
Who STaaS Is Right For
- Organisations with tight capital budgets — STaaS moves storage onto the OpEx line rather than requiring capital approval
- Rapidly growing data environments — scale capacity without procurement delays
- Regulated industries — financial services, healthcare, legal — where data must remain on-premise for compliance
- Organisations approaching a hardware refresh — convert the refresh into a subscription rather than another capital purchase
- Construction and media & entertainment — sectors with large, growing data volumes and project-based storage demands
Ready to explore whether STaaS is right for your organisation? Speak to our storage specialists — we've been doing this since 1994.
Speak to a specialist →Frequently Asked Questions
What does Storage as a Service mean?
Storage as a Service (STaaS) means paying a monthly or annual fee for enterprise storage capacity rather than purchasing hardware outright. The storage can be delivered on-premise at your site or via a cloud provider. Fortuna Data's STaaS model is on-premise, meaning your data stays in your building with full UK sovereignty.
Is Storage as a Service the same as cloud storage?
No. Cloud storage services like Azure Blob or AWS S3 store your data in a third-party data centre, billed per gigabyte per month. STaaS from Fortuna Data places the storage hardware on-premise at your site — you get the subscription pricing model of cloud without losing data control, performance, or compliance.
What is the difference between STaaS and buying storage?
Buying storage outright requires capital expenditure upfront, followed by depreciation, a support contract, and eventually a refresh cycle. STaaS converts this into a predictable monthly OpEx cost with support and eventual hardware refresh included — no capital approval required, no refresh project to manage.
Can I scale Storage as a Service up as I grow?
Yes. One of the key advantages of STaaS is the ability to scale capacity as your data grows without a new procurement project. Fortuna Data manages the expansion within your existing subscription framework.
Is my data safe with Storage as a Service?
With Fortuna Data's on-premise STaaS model, your data is stored on enterprise hardware at your own site under your own physical security controls. You have the same data sovereignty, compliance, and security as a traditional on-premise deployment — with the financial model of a subscription service.