Storage is being looked at with new eyes as CIOs and CEOs see that storage is a critical component of managing big data, the Internet-of-things, cloud and analytics. Smarter storage is necessary for businesses to stay ahead as data continues to explode—to 2.7 zettabytes in 2012, up 48 percent from 2011. In fact, 57 percent of IT decision makers from a 2011 IBM survey stated that their organizations need a new storage approach to manage future growth. As storage becomes a key business driver in 2012, IBM officials said the industry will see new breakthroughs in storage research and business models coming from sectors such as entertainment and health care. Meanwhile, technologies such as IBM SmartCloud can enable organizations, their employees and partners to get what they need when they need it, from advanced analytics and business applications to IT infrastructure such as virtual servers and storage to access to tools for testing software code. IBM officials said all this can be deployed securely across IBM’s global network of cloud data centers. With these new storage challenges and opportunities, Steve Wojtowecz, vice president of storage software development at IBM, outlined the five storage trends that will emerge in 2012.
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Storage Breakthroughs Nip at ‘Digital Dark Age’
The volume of digital data will grow to 2.7 zettabytes in 2012, up 48 percent from 2011. Still, digital storage often can be more perishable than paper. Disks corrode, bits “rot” and hardware becomes obsolete, all of which could create a “Digital Dark Age,” where digital storage techniques and formats created today quickly become antiquated. The floppy disk is a good example. But storage mediums can be much denser, solid state disks offer more stable longer-term preservation of data, and the cloud allows access to data anywhere, anytime. Recently, IBM researchers unveiled Racetrack memory, which could lead to a new type of data-centric computing that allows massive amounts of stored data to be accessed in less than a billionth of a second.
Data Curation
The world now can preserve the digital universe; the challenge is making it useful. The next step beyond data preservation is data curation—the ongoing management of data through its lifecycle, IBM officials say. This will add value to data that will help businesses glean new opportunities, improve information sharing and preserve data for reuse. IBM officials point to social media sites such as Facebook and Google+ as examples of the power of curated data, compiling the digital lives of users and giving them a platform to organize their content. But there’s a lot of work involved in selecting, appraising and organizing data. If data can be stored in a way that provides context, organizations can find new and useful ways to use that data.
Storage Analytics
Analytics will help turn curated data into intelligence and knowledge. Historical trending analytics and infrastructure analytics lets businesses index and search in a more intelligent way, and analytics on stored data can give businesses insight. IBM officials point to their Watson technology for health care as an example. Watson collects data from many sources and can analyze the meaning and context. By processing vast amounts of information and using analytics, it can suggest options targeted to a patient's circumstances, including giving doctors and nurses the most likely diagnosis and treatment options.
Storage in the Spotlight
Hollywood is known for its big-budget blockbusters, but it’s the big storage demands required by new formats such as digital, CGI, 3D and high definition that’s impacting the studios’ ability to produce these types of movies. Data sets for movies are at the petabyte level, and the popularity of such formats means studios are looking for new storage technologies. The health care industry is facing an even bigger data dilemma. A genetic study at The Institute University of Leipzig, in Germany, can generate multiple terabytes of data. A 300-bed hospital may generate 30 terabytes of data per year. Higher-resolution medical imaging and making electronic health care records available online will grow the demand.
The Data Hoarder
In the era of big data, more is not always better, especially when every byte of data costs money. Businesses are becoming data hoarders, spending too much time and money collecting useless or bad data that can lead to misguided business decisions. Simple policy decisions and existing storage technologies can change this, but companies are hesitant to delete any data—or duplicate data—for fear of needing specific data down the line. Part of the solution is deleting copies, lowering costs. The outdated data can also be accessed for fraud.
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Storage is being looked at with new eyes as CIOs and CEOs see that storage is a critical component of managing big data, the Internet-of-things, cloud and analytics. Smarter storage is necessary for businesses to stay ahead as data continues to explode—to 2.7 zettabytes in 2012, up 48 percent from 2011. In fact, 57 percent of IT decision makers from a 2011 IBM survey stated that their organizations need a new storage approach to manage future growth. As storage becomes a key business driver in 2012, IBM officials said the industry will see new breakthroughs in storage research and business models coming from sectors such as entertainment and health care. Meanwhile, technologies such as IBM SmartCloud can enable organizations, their employees and partners to get what they need when they need it, from advanced analytics and business applications to IT infrastructure such as virtual servers and storage to access to tools for testing software code. IBM officials said all this can be deployed securely across IBM’s global network of cloud data centers. With these new storage challenges and opportunities, Steve Wojtowecz, vice president of storage software development at IBM, outlined the five storage trends that will emerge in 2012.