Data Storage On The Back Burner As Big Data Takes Over

While big data is not a new concept, it’s really in the last two years that corporate America has taken note and stock of all the information. According to research, companies only analyze around 12% of the data they have, which hardly taps into the full potential of big data at all. In fact, these corporations lose around $3.1 trillion annually in bad data, which can do quite a number on the bottom line. For corporations, the double edge on their sword as big data takes over is that with all this big data comes the responsibility of big storage too.

And So We’re Back To Magnetic Tape

The tech giants have spoken, and those in the storage realms need to make some game-changing additions to support for online data storage, and soon. Google, NASA, and Microsoft are all known to store their archived data on tape. While many users may think that all the information is just floating around in the ether, there are still storage facilities that house some of the most critical data on the planet. But the size of the storage facilities is slowly on the rise as big data comes into play, making it increasingly difficult to store safely.

Thanks to new technology, however, researchers from IBM in Zurich have discovered how to store 201 gigabytes of data onto one square inch of tape. This technology means that not only will the size of the storage facilities be able to accommodate the accumulated data, but it may also reduce the cost of storage which translates into profit. Secure offline storage means that these corporates, and even individuals who decide to make use of magnetic tape, are safe from hackers and viruses.

Physical Storage Should Ramp Up

Artificial intelligence is at the heart of big data, and to many, it seems like the cart before the horse. While the technology is already in play, the infrastructure to support all of it seems questionable. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome for corporates who employ this data, is reducing the bottleneck of traffic to and from the cloud, as all this information is accessed across their various platforms. While temporary storage is a must, corporates and even small businesses will still have much need for hardware storage solutions that include SD cards, external hard drives, and flash drives.

There is a twofold reason why physical storage should alleviate bottlenecking. The first is that less information is archived on the cloud, as it is accessible only from the physical storage. The second is that those who have highly secured information can’t back it up to the cloud, which means less traffic once again.

Viable Storage Critical For Future Data Analytics

One of the biggest reasons big data experienced a slight lull where tech giants and corporates were concerned, is partly due to the fact that there was nowhere to store all this information. Also, it needed to be accessible in order for it to be useful. Storage costs both on and offline have dropped significantly, which makes it more affordable and reasonable to employ all that data gathered. Now, for a corporate to run analytics on past behavior patterns of consumers is a simple exercise, and makes the implementation of big data analytics critical. Storage is also important for AI, as AI is not useful unless it has reams and reams of data to work through. Big data without AI is just a chunk of information, and AI without data is a useless investment. At the heart of both, is sufficient storage.

For organizations, the use of current big data and historical information provides them with a real-time game plan for their next move, as they are equipped with the right information. While some information requires cloud storage, there is still a very viable physical storage market out there, which seems to be on the increase.

Conclusion

There’s no denying that big data holds immense promise and is worth exploring. And while it’s exciting to see corporations start to embrace big data’s possibility, that doesn’t mean that data storage planning can fall by the wayside. After all, we’re only going to continue creating more data than our planet has ever seen before. We need to make sure that we’re ready for it.