DM May-Jun 2023

Dm STRATEGY: STORAGE
Mastering modern data storage
Eric Bassier, Senior Director Products, Quantum, offers some useful strategies
for navigating today's data landscape
The growth in the creation, storage,
and management of data has
become so large that the associated
numbers are increasingly hard to
comprehend. To illustrate, the total
amount of data created, captured, copied,
and consumed globally is expected to
exceed 180 zettabytes by 2025 - a figure
so enormous that, in 'old money', it
represents the equivalent of around 39
trillion DVDs.
It's no wonder, therefore, that data has
also become such a valuable and
important commodity. Together with the
financial implications, however, comes the
accompanying risk factors and for many
organisations, harnessing and managing
their data presents some huge - and
sometimes insurmountable - challenges.
Yet, in the contemporary business
context, realising the intrinsic and latent
value of data has become one of today's
mission-critical priorities in the fight to
stay relevant in rapidly changing markets.
For each organisation, addressing the
opportunities that the effective
exploitation of data can bring is grounded
on developing a clear understanding of
what datasets they create and collect, how
often they need to access them, and how
long they need to retain them.
As a result, the storage strategy any
organisation adopts is crucial to meeting
both data and wider business objectives.
Without an effective
approach, however, deriving full value
from data that's improperly stored and
secured is impractical and frequently
impossible.
THE ROLE OF STRUCTURED AND
UNSTRUCTURED DATA
In defining what is required within any
storage solution, every organisation first
needs to understand the volume and
proportion of structured and unstructured
data it holds. Unstructured data, such as
the ubiquitous creation and retention of
video and image files, now make up the
lion's share of data generated by most
modern organisations on a daily basis. As
a result, it consumes the most storage
capacity and resources - a trend which is
set to grow further, with 80% of the
world's data expected to be unstructured
within the next two years.
The next big question is how much of
the data an organisation is generating can
and should be archived for longer-term
retention, for security purposes, or to
meet compliance obligations - and for
what period of time. Moreover, what
impact does this approach have on the
ability of an organisation to use archived
data for analytics down the line? Be in no
doubt, these variables should have a direct
impact on what type of storage is used
and how much capacity
must be allocated to each use case.
ASSESSING NEEDS AND SELECTING
THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS
The obvious question to consider at this
stage is how can an understanding of
these points help inform the choice of
storage solutions. Complicating the
process is the sheer number of options
available, and from on-premises solutions
to outsourced cloud services or a hybrid
approach, every organisation has
important choices to make. Despite the
challenges this situation can create, there
are some unifying ideas to consider:
Firstly, performing a comprehensive data
audit and analysis exercise can help fully
reveal what kind of data each organisation
generates and collects, how they should
retain it, and over what timescale. Not
only does this help identify what datasets
exist, but it also helps teams understand
more about the quality of data they hold
and how to maximise its accuracy and
efficacy. Without having full confidence in
the integrity and validity of data,
organisations are, by default, introducing
more risk into any data-led activities they
undertake.
Assuming that a data audit has been
carried out and assets are generally in a
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May/June 2023
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