Enterprises need to look at data storage in a completely new way.
This is according to Stuart Cheverton, business development consultant at Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), who was speaking during the company's unveiling of its latest cloud solutions and services, including the Hitachi Content Platform. During the event, several members of the HDS team also addressed the problems that enterprises are facing when it comes to big data.
According to Cheverton, storage has changed significantly over the past five years and business requirements are constantly outstripping what IT can do. "Users are becoming more tech savvy. New technologies have raised their expectations of what the enterprise should provide and this can be problematic," he said, adding that has become important to give IT the ability to manage the data, while ensuring a good user experience.
"Speaking to CIOs, a common challenge that they are facing is data growth. Companies want to know how to deal with the amount of data being generated. They are interested in finding out how to get value out of data and drive value for the business," said Shaun Barendsen, country manager for HDS SA, at the event.
It is important for us to leverage the data to give companies what they need, said Barendsen, going on to say that storing significant amounts of unimportant data is costly and unnecessary. "Storing data is of no use unless it is transformed into information that gives the business a competitive advantage."
As data starts to outlive applications, Cheverton advised that businesses make use of cloud and cloud solutions as these offerings serve as a great way to manage and store different kinds of data within an enterprise, noting the archiving potential of cloud solutions. Retiring non-critical data by moving it out of the primary storage environment means that IT will have fewer backup headaches; thus promoting agility and reducing costs, while mitigating the risks associated with storing important data, he said. Having a content core where all your critical data is stored is a good way to reduce storage density, noted Cheverton.
To illustrate his point, Cheverton cited a case study where the HDS team did a file assessment for a company and found that more than 50% of the data the company was storing had not been accessed in over six months.
This static data was clogging up production systems and costing the company money, which can be mitigated by implementing a better storage consumption model, he said.
"There is so much complexity within the storage environment today," Cheverton concluded. "Success comes when the company determines the business relevance of the data and manages it accordingly."
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