With the expansion of the digital gold rush, data is moving into the spotlight and becoming a valuable source of information. Estimates are that the digital universe will continue to double every two years at least and reach 44 zettabytes by 2020, 50-fold growth compared to 2010. The sheer size of the data lake is staggering, but the million-dollar question remains; that is, how to make sense out of the data tsunami and capitalize on it.
The phenomenon referred to as Moore’s law has been observed for decades, and with the emergence of new technology (SSD, SW-defined storage, object storage, etc.) as well as the consolidation within the storage industry, the price spirals keep heading south with a double-digit decline year-on-year.
In the digital age, the real cost of data storage is no longer in purchasing hardware but in the effort and knowledge required to diligently manage digital assets. Across many industries and geographies this is made even more challenging due to increasingly restrictive requirements for data life-cycle management, country-specific privacy laws and bolstered compliance regulations for data-retention periods, greater utilization of encryption technology, and so on.
According to IDC’s research, the market for big data analytics will soar from $130 billion in 2016 to more than $203 billion in 2020, equaling a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.7 percent.
Although enterprises spend a fortune on collecting, storing and managing data, only a few excel in converting raw data into actionable information. This is particularly true as far as unstructured content is concerned, which still accounts for approximately 80 to 90 percent of all corporate data.
A recent report by Veritas concluded that 52 percent of all data currently stored and processed by enterprises around the globe is considered “dark,” whose value is unknown. As much as 33 percent of the data is considered redundant, obsolete or trivial, and is even known to be useless. On average, only 15 percent of all stored data is considered to be business critical. Unless enterprises take corrective action and become more considerate, estimates are that a “data hoarding” culture will cumulatively lead to $3.3 trillion in avoidable costs by 2020, for managing the digital cemetery.
In light of the fierce price battles, especially in the public cloud domain, and the ability for enterprises to store shiploads of data at low costs per unit, many of them feel strongly tempted to take advantage of it and swiftly transition corporate data into the cloud. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons for doing so and use cases in abundance, the decision to touch petabytes of data should be taken thoroughly.
