BENGALURU: Organisations today face challenges with the rapid growth of unstructured data, driven by factors such as mobile technology, cloud computing, machine learning, and emerging technologies. In an interaction with TNIE, Rob Lee, chief technology officer of Pure Storage, says modern unstructured data needs to be organised, accessed, and processed faster than ever before. Excerpts:
What are the latest trends in technology and how are companies adapting to them?
In recent years, there has been a meaningful shift in how data has been generated and consumed. A substantial portion of today’s data growth stems from machine-generated sources like smartphones capturing images and videos, security data, log data, IoT data, and more. To manage this exponential growth, we are seeing the continued disruption of the legacy data storage space.
Traditional hard disk-based storage solutions are being replaced by flash storage, and this transition shows no signs of slowing down. Data storage and access needs are both growing, and disk-based systems are not well positioned to meet these needs - disk is inefficient, power- and space-hungry, and far less reliable. Put them together and you have mounting issues for data centres, bottom lines, the environment, and innovative, next-gen technologies and applications - from the Metaverse and Blockchain to Web 3.0 and artificial intelligence. AI, in particular, has become one of the fastest and largest areas of enterprise technology investment and innovation.
What are the advantages of enterprise storage?
The enterprise data storage market has consistently grown, and is projected to rise at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of over 6% from 2021 to 2026. There has been an unprecedented increase in enterprise data generation owing to the increased usage of digital services and applications within the businesses, thus necessitating upgraded storage infrastructure. This growth is indicative of the need to serve more and more data-hungry applications and creates opportunities for customers to modernise their legacy infrastructure.
What is the cost involved in data storage and what can companies do to reduce it?
There are a number of costs that go into running a data storage environment - those of which can significantly range based on the technology deployed. From power and space requirements, to unreliable, inflexible technology that requires labour-intensive management, traditional upgrades, and significant downtime, data storage can often become a burden to IT budgets.