The amount of data to store keeps on growing, so much so that ridiculous names have to be invented for the amount of it, such as ‘Zettabyte’ and ‘Exabyte.’

Cisco predicted that by 2016, data traffic on mobile devices worldwide will reach 130 exabytes per year — roughly equivalent to 33 billion DVDs and 18 times the current amount.

Despite the economic state we’re in, everyone creates more and more unique information every day. However, very little is deleted. Furthermore, it is organised badly and the IT systems it is stored on are amazingly inefficient. This data storage problem is accelerating because IT managers do not have sufficient time to specifically address this issue.

As well as that, people are now starting to realise the true value of what they store. Data storage is turning from a costly side effect of doing business, to many organisations’ biggest differentiator. Whilst storing small amounts of data is easy, storing larger quantities of data is only easy for those who have money to burn and see no value in it.

Businesses are discovering that it’s very hard to store large amounts of data efficiently as well being able to extract business value from the data.

VMware did some research a few years ago which showed that typical IT departments spend about 70% of their budget ‘keeping the lights on’. Energy efficient light bulbs might help, but more needs to be done to reduce both capital and operational costs to a more sensible level.

Companies and individuals need to act now to reduce the amount wasted storing unnecessarily high levels of data, so that instead, more can be spent on improving their businesses’ agility and cash can be freed up to invest in creating IT-led differentiation.

As a starting point, companies need to estimate how much money is being wasted unnecessarily. NetApp has invested tools to help companies assess their Data Centre Fitness.

Big Data is a new way of thinking about data supported by a new set of IT technologies and architectures designed to accelerate the extraction of economic value from increasingly large amounts of stored data. Big Data is an evolution of many IT trends.

Recently, McKinsey, IDC, The 451 group and others have offered research to help segment the Big Data opportunity. NetApp segments Big Data solutions into ‘ABC’ as follows:

  • Big Analytics: Better decision making based on faster analysis of larger data sets
  • Big Bandwidth: Ever faster Performance for data-intensive workloads that weren’t viable before
  • Big Content: Store everything, find what you need, keep it forever.

In summary, Big Data is what 70% of IT budgets should be spent on in the future. Companies need to understand that data is foundational to their success. If they choose to invest in innovation to store their big data more efficiently it will help them to extract maximum economic value from it.

 

John Rollason, solutions marketing manager, EMEA
John Rollason is solutions marketing manager, EMEA at NetApp. In this role, he not only works closely with the regional and worldwide marketing teams but also with sales and system engineering. His main tasks include internal and external communication regarding NetApp technologies and solutions as well as messaging and competitive positioning.

His main focus areas are virtualisation and storage networking. Rollason has been with NetApp since May 2005, initially holding the role of Product Marketing Manager for UK and Ireland. Before joining NetApp, John spent over eight years at Nortel in a variety of positions in system engineering, business development and product marketing. John attended The University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, gaining an M. Eng (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.