How a business need to manage data growth
The data a company holds is increasingly recognised as being one of the most important assets a business has. This is especially meaningful when one considers that the amount of information generated daily, has increased more than ten times since 2005.
Add to this the sobering forecast factoring growth of over a 700% increase for data storage during the next five years:
- IoT (Internet of Things)
- Technology making it easier to capture and store information.
- Increased processing and imaging power.
- New and emerging technologies, VR, AR, AI, 4k, 8k, holographic, self-driving vehicles, robots.
- The retail industry alone expected to experience data growth of 900% within 5 years.
- 2 Billion Photos are shared daily on Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr.
- 65% growth in mobile data traffic over last 12 months driven by video.
- 59% of companies do not fully understand their data storage estate.
When one layers on top of these predications the realisation that effective management of this information can make the difference between business success and failure then the picture becomes even more compelling.
However, the unfortunate reality is that companies are struggling to cope now with this avalanche of information and so how on earth will they perform in the future?
How do companies cope now?
The default position is to store the data. In fact this is the easy part and there are many options available such as disk, cloud, tape, optical, SSD and so on. All these have pro’s and con’s in terms of management, running costs, subscription fees, WAN/LAN links. However whichever method is used, all lead to:
- Backup everything forever
- Increase WAN/LAN links
- Protect, replicate and clone information
Having implemented a storage policy a company then believes it is doing a great job of protecting the information that it considers to be vital to its business. But this is a misapprehension and runs the danger of under valuing the data.
Is storing information the solution?
Quite simply it is only part of the solution.
Storing information is expensive and it just becomes a matter of time before a company will be faced with issues regarding data migration from legacy systems to new, investing in new LAN/WAN links, software licensing, support and maintenance contracts. The management of all these issues becomes a mammoth task for any IT department but the irony is that:
- 90% of data will never be accessed and has little value
- Unless handled correctly managing data is a liability
- Only 5% of all information collected is analysed
So, what can and should be done?
- First of all, businesses must recognise the value that is contained within the vast amount of company data being stored. It needs to be appreciated as being an invaluable asset and awarded a much higher place on the list of company priorities.
- Secondly a layer of business intelligence needs to be applied to this information.
Companies need to analyse information in far greater depth to find new ways of viewing, filtering, collating and exploiting meaningful uses of the data being gathered. Tools are available to do this and can be implemented with little or no impact on company processes.
Without them companies run a massive risk in under appreciating the data being held not realising that is so easy to mitigate against it.
How can we help?
For over 20 years Fortuna has been providing networking and storage solutions to companies throughout the world. The company understands data and its importance. Most importantly we have tools to effectively manage this information to benefit the overall profitability of the business. We are now actively involved in helping to bring these solutions to market.
If you would like to know more about how this type of software works please visit https://www.fortunadata.com/business-intelligence-software/ or call us on 01256 782030 for advice.
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