Cape Town, 22 Mar 2016
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), there is an accelerating transition to the Third Platform for innovation and growth, which is built on the technology pillars of mobile computing, big data and analytics, cloud services and social networking. Moreover, the IDC predicts this will be the primary growth driver of the ICT industry over the next decade, with worldwide industry spend expected to reach $5.3 trillion by 2020.
The challenge with current Third Platform thinking, says Edge Bisset, CEO at CyberLogic, is that although many solutions are being rapidly adopted by organisations, these are often implemented as an after-thought, outside of the existing IT strategy.
"Clearly, this approach can cause additional problems. For example, existing data management and retention policies are often poorly suited to the new environment. In addition, it can result in data being duplicated across the existing infrastructure and cloud systems. When such duplication is added to the natural exponential growth of data volumes - caused by an increase in rich media, among other things - it leads to massive pressure being placed on the physical storage architecture, negatively impacting both storage capacity and speed," he says.
Worse still, continues Bisset, is the problem created by the simple fact that as organisations divert budget into the newer Third Platform solutions, it leaves less spend for the traditional on-site components. And with physical infrastructure now viewed as 'legacy', when compared to the Third Platform systems of the future, enterprises are increasingly reluctant to commit further spend to boosting local storage speed or capacity. "This, in turn, creates another dilemma for IT managers in that they now not only have to support unprecedented data growth rates, but must do so with a reduced budget."
Of course, much of this can be avoided by the effective use of proper monitoring and management systems, as these should enable a business to see such trends developing and thus to plan accordingly, he suggests.
"In addition, businesses must be prepared to review their existing IT strategy proactively as changes occur in the network environment, or even take the decision to review the IT strategy from the ground up. This is probably the best approach, and acknowledges that Third Platform solutions are a significant change from the current status quo."
"At the same time, when it comes to the physical systems, the judicious use of virtualisation, combined with tiered storage and systems like Microsoft's Storage Spaces, will allow an organisation to build a storage system which is flexible enough to handle changing IT requirements relatively easily. It should be noted that the broadening adoption of cloud, mobile, social and big data is only going to increase the need for such flexible storage."
He adds that as we move forward, it is clear that the need for sound planning and design will only increase. Organisations will need to find the right balance between cloud and on-premises systems, as there will almost certainly be some data and systems that work best in the cloud, while others will always be better suited to on-premises.
"Finally, businesses should consider implementing more effective data life cycle management policies. The vast volumes of data which are generated and stored need not necessarily be retained indefinitely. By understanding those data types and planning their storage accordingly, one is able to ensure more effective data cleansing and better housekeeping. In this way, the organisation can make the best use of any given storage platform.
"Ultimately, coping with a Third Platform future is quite easy: it simply requires better planning, in terms of strategies, policies and physical systems, in the present," concludes Bisset.
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