The IDC's 'The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe' report states there is an ever-increasing gap between data being created and available storage capacity. In 2020, says IDC, if every byte of digital data were to be kept, there would be a 60% shortfall in available storage.
A recent survey by Gartner found that data growth is the biggest data centre infrastructure challenge for large enterprises. The research firm found that enterprise data is growing at an average of 40% to 60% year over year.
“There is no doubt that data is growing exponentially,” says Xiotech Africa country manager, Derek Rule. “This is driven by factors such as an increase in uptake of Internet-enabled mobile devices. With users now having the ability to access data anywhere, any time, we are seeing more data creation than ever before.”
“Smartphones have overtaken desktops,” agrees Tumi Pooe, sales and business unit manager for HP's StorageWorks division. “This paradigm shift has resulted in a new generation of users that are used to being connected to the Internet 25 hours a day.”
A recent survey by World Wide Worx revealed that 39% of urban and 27% of rural South African users are now using Internet on their phones, a total of at least six million local users.
“The proliferation of mobile devices is having a huge affect on storage, especially since they are considered to be business tools,” says Rule.
According to Pooe, it is estimated that structured data is growing at about 30% to 40% per annum while unstructured data increasing at a staggering rate of 75% a year, and up annually. “This is putting a lot of pressure on IT not only to perform, but also to cut costs and run lean,” he says.
Cloud considerations
“Cloud computing is the inevitable outcome resulting from the many challenges associated with traditional physical storage,” says Chris Norton, regional director for VMware. Although local adoption rates are still relatively low, Norton believes as companies start to realise the benefits, uptake will probably increase dramatically.
“The public cloud is perfect for non-critical business applications, many of which are significantly storage intensive,” he says.
Pooe notes that around 70% of organisations in SA have deployed, are going to deploy, or are thinking of deploying cloud technologies. “An increase in local bandwidth quality and a reduction in cost will change the way businesses are run.”
However, Rule believes there has been little or no increase in broadband availability in SA as yet, and this is affecting many industries, including storage.
“South African broadband hasn't improved, especially from a storage point of view,” he says. “It is one of the most inhibiting factors to business at the moment.”
He says this limitation affects the entire business model, even if indirectly. “For instance, the network side is being held back by storage which is limited by bandwidth.”
According to Rule, there are still too many challenges for cloud computing in SA to really take off. “Besides bandwidth restrictions, most risk factors are overlooked.”
Before you leap
According to Riaan de Leeuw, unified infrastructure group sales manager at EMC, most of the risks involved with cloud infrastructure can be addressed through consultation and technology.
“Cloud is not a once-off solution, but a journey,” he says. “Many of the uncertainties associated with it can be addressed through consulting - which tends to be disregarded.”
Cloud computing will increasingly become a reality and companies must be careful not to let its benefits overshadow the risk factors involved, says Norton. “Implementation should be done only after proper planning,” he adds.
According to Rule, although organisations generally seem attracted to the idea of cloud, many are still nervous. “I don't think cloud uptake, particularly in the storage arena, will be as substantial as what was seen with virtualisation. I also believe business uptake will more likely be in the private cloud rather than the public cloud.”
Symantec's storage predictions 2011
Data growth: The exponential level of data growth is impeding organisations' ability to effectively manage and recover data. As a result, storage administrators will need to lose their 'pack-rat' mentality and start getting a better grasp of their storage usage.
Top priority: regain control of information - The IDC estimated that the amount of digital information would reach 1.2 million petabytes by the end of last year. (A petabyte is a million gigabytes.) By 2020, IDC expects the amount of digital information will be 44 times as big as it was in 2009. Such growth will have a profound impact on IT's ability to meet the needs of its business units.
The evolving data centre: IT organisations are looking at various cloud computing models where IT is delivered as a service. To get there, they will have to build the foundation of delivering storage-as-a-service.
Storage virtualisation challenges: While virtualisation continues to decrease server costs, it can make information management more complex, particularly as it relates to storage.
The next wave of mobile devices: The IDC estimates that, by year's end, new mobile device shipments will have increased by 55%, while Gartner predicts that 1.2 billion people will be using mobile phones with Web connectivity by the end of 2011.The widespread consumer adoption of smart mobile devices will increasingly result in these devices making their way into the enterprise through the back door, blurring the lines between business and personal use and driving new IT security and management models to market in 2011.
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