Brace your data center, big data is coming
For years now, it seems IT experts have been warning of the coming of big data, like street preachers continually decrying that the end is nigh. The past year or so has shown that these volumes are no longer a mere threat but a reality faced by firms of all sizes. In fact, a review of the history of computer technology will quickly reveal that data management has been an ongoing struggle since businesses began using file storage systems. This may lead some IT professionals to wonder if maybe big data hype has been blown out of proportion.
On the one hand, the amount of information being generated and curated by firms every day is increasing at previously unseen rates. Much of this is due to the rise of cloud computing resources, which have allowed companies and consumers to share, create, send, modify, collaborate, collect, disseminate and destroy a vast volume of data with relative ease. Considering these raw amounts, the sheer bulk may appear overwhelming at first glance, but progression in hard disk management and data migration have made it easy to store hundreds of petabytes on a single array. So while files of all kinds continue to increase in number each day, the tools companies have available to them are already primed to handle these perceived problems. The trick is making sure businesses realize that fact.
“Organizations need to leverage technologies and capabilities like dynamic storage provisioning, virtualization and non-disruptive data management,” Hu Yoshida of Hitachi told The Nation Multimedia.
Rationalizing big data fears
As ChannelPro pointed out, companies should think of big data from two viewpoints. There’s the delivery side, where files are generated and received, and then there’s the management side, where firms set up hard disk management software, analytics and intelligence programs and a variety of other data consolidation tools to handle current information loads. The source warned that big data fears often lead companies to overprovision their infrastructure, creating a system that is inherently flawed due to its unnecessary complexity and redundancy. Again, the biggest problem with handling big data seems not to be the volume of files themselves, but rather the perceptions corporations carry about these assets. They’re simply overthinking their solutions.
Much of what comprises modern big data management are the same initiatives and goals that companies have been pursuing for the last decade, ChannelPro wrote. The only thing that’s changed are the media involved. Big data isn’t the end of the world, it’s the start of a new one for corporate information.