In a world that thrives on the consumption of data, it is not surprising that today we are experiencing enormous data growth, so much so that it threatens the vast majority of organizations.
The result is massive data expansion, resulting in reduced productivity and performance for many organizations, and this expansion prevents future innovation and growth.
Data drowning
According to the IDC analysis agency, the digital universe is even growing by 50% a year and doubles every two years. Similarly, IDC predicts that by 2025 the volume of the data environment to be analysed will increase by a factor of 50 to 5.2 BZ. The number of analysed data affected by cognitive systems will be multiplied by 100 to reach 1.4ZB in 2025. But we can’t just ignore this data as insignificant and archivable without quick access, because analysts predict that by 2025 20% of the world’s data will be critical to our daily lives, and nearly 10% of it will be supercritical.
That’s a lot of data to store. How can organizations manage this huge increase cost-efficiently?
Can store an unlimited amount of data
Cloud storage is one way to achieve this goal. By storing objects in the cloud, companies can store virtually unlimited amounts of data. It also helps organizations eliminate multiple data warehouses by providing massively scalable, cost-effective storage that can easily store and manage any type of data. This is important because, as the business grows, there is a need to manage fast-growing but often isolated data pools that are used by multiple applications and business processes.
Other reasons why the storage of objects is considered suitable for the cloud are that it is flexible and adaptable and can easily be scaled to multiple petabytes to support unlimited data growth. Organisations need to address this problem, as multifunctional repositories can add unnecessary complexity and, as mentioned above, slow down innovation.
In the past, organizations have created complete and isolated network environments that are not scaled or do not provide sufficient access to data. These conditions were harsh and very costly. Conversely, cloud storage enables organizations to structure data into unstructured files, making it easier to protect, store, manage, search, synchronize, and share.
Solving cost and performance issues
In essence, choosing cloud storage enables companies to meet cost and performance challenges. It can be used to replace existing storage solutions or to meet new clean storage requirements.
However, magnetic tape solutions are still used by many organizations and are not only expensive, but also considered outdated and unreliable. Without proper test tapes it can be difficult to recover data when it is time to extract the information quickly. In addition, it can be difficult to store tapes with a large number of cassettes and ensure that the right tape with the right data can be retrieved when needed. Non-searchable data is rapidly becoming a tangible responsibility for the economy, which will only increase with the advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In short, cloud storage provides cost-effective and reliable storage of large amounts of data and the ability to archive large amounts of data much more efficiently and securely for virtually unlimited periods of time. In addition, cloud storage reduces the cost of IT infrastructure and increases IT staff productivity, because businesses need much less time and staff to manage the environment. Improvements in business operations and user productivity are well known. IDC predicts that companies using object-oriented storage cloud will generate an average of $102,000 per petabyte per year in additional revenue.
Real-time search and retrieval delivers significant value
Cloud storage isn’t for everyone. I’m sure some companies will continue to keep their tapes, but in addition to the cost, object storage also offers the benefits of quick search and real-time access to data for monetization. The possibility to immediately search for specific characteristics, such as date, data type, content or description, and then retrieve the companies immediately, can significantly increase the value of the data. This value will increase rapidly in the near future as technologies such as artificial intelligence create new ways to analyse data, scan images and sounds for specific characteristics. These tools enable analyses such as facial recognition, speech recognition and action analysis, and create new possibilities for re-filtering and monetizing stored media. With these possibilities, archives become an asset that constantly contributes to the end result instead of just consuming overheads.
A loan for a painting: Wavebreakmedia/depositphotos.com
Sarah Doherty is head of product marketing, Iland.
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