Entries categorized under “Big Data”

A major objective for most organizations either right now or in the near future is to put in place a private storage cloud architecture to make the storage and ongoing management of their data easier to accomplish. It is for these reasons that many organizations are turning to scale-out storage systems as the preferred architecture to achieve this objective. Here is where it gets tricky. Scale-out storage system architectures have diverged to offer organizations many paths to follow in order to arrive at their desired private storage cloud destination. (read more)

Large enterprises are feeling the pressure of Big Data in every way possible. They have more data to store, more information to access and less time than ever to back it up, secure it and then recover it. It is in this area of backup and recovery that enterprises need better options to protect their data while also alleviating mounting security concerns. The Sepaton S2100-ES3 2925 with its new V7.0 software provides them with the match they want. (read more)

Bad news is only bad until you hear it, then it's just information followed by opportunity. Information may arrive in political, personal, technological and economic forms. It creates opportunity which brings people, vision, ideas and investment together. When thinking about a future history of 2013, three (3) opportunities come to mind. (read more)

Today EMC announced the availability of a new online file sharing (often referred to as 'sync and share') solution that is aimed at meeting the needs of enterprises. EMC is the first single vendor to offer a comprehensive, end-to-end solution in the file-sync-and-share marketplace. The new EMC solution provides an enterprise grade file-sync-and-share infrastructure from a single vendor. It combats enterprise data leakage risks while helping organizations realize the advantages of increased productivity and collaboration that sync and share enables. EMC backs the enterprise grade moniker with their professional services and 24x7 global support. The solution combines the simplicity and scalability of Isilon scale-out storage with Syncplicity's sync and share administrative and policy control tools. (read more)

There is a tendency to look at Big Data and private cloud storage strictly from the perspective of enterprises that need to manage petabytes (PBs) of data. But small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) have their own smaller Big Data and private cloud storage needs that require they manage and store tens or hundreds of terabytes (TBs) of data with just a few people. Imation's recent announcement that it is acquiring Nexsan Corporation gives SMEs a compelling new option to pursue to meet their specific Big Data and cloud storage requirements. (read more)

Ever since I got involved with IT in general and data storage specifically, the predominant way that organizations manage their data growth is by throwing more storage at the problem. Sure, they pay homage to technologies like archiving, data lifecycle management and storage resource management (SRM) but at the end of the day the "just buy more" principle prevails. Yet as we enter 2013, data management is finally poised to become a data center priority. (read more)

As the last business day of 2012 it is time for DCIG to unveil its most read blog entries of 2012. While a few long time reader favorites remain in this year's Top 5, a couple of newcomers also made first time appearances on this year's list driven by what is likely growing user interest/concern in managing Big Data and doing eDiscovery across their unstructured data stores. (read more)

Mention the year 2008 or 2009 to almost any person and it almost inevitably elicits a negative reaction in terms of how those years were from a business perspective. However as DCIG renews its annual tradition of reflecting back on what blog entries were most read on its website during the course of 2012, 2008 and 2009 emerged as very good years in terms of DCIG providing content that is still relevant and frequently read in 2012. Today and over the next four (4) business days, I will share what blog entries garnered the most attention on DCIG's website in 2012. (read more)

Bring your own device (BYOD) file-sync-and-sharing has exploded in 2012. There are over forty (40) companies offering at least one product to organizations of all sizes. Over half of those companies offer a consumer grade version of their file-sync-and-share. With so many options, CIOs are unable to focus on choosing solutions to enable their organization's workforce while managing data leakage. CIOs can't choose products because the market hasn't been consistently defined. In an effort to define a Buyer's Guide, DCIG is conducting a survey for Mobile Device and Cloud File Sharing. (read more)

Bringing storage systems initially designed to meet Big Data demands into enterprise data centers is proving to be a bigger challenge than either storage providers or enterprises anticipated. While enterprises certainly want a storage system with a cost-effective, easy-to-manage, scalable architecture, other features such as data protection, data security and virtualization integration also come into play. EMC Isilon's latest OneFS 7.0 operating system takes these specific needs into account freeing enterprises to tackle their Big Data concerns. (read more)

Many businesses are allocating a portion of their IT budgets to Big Data analytics projects. At the same time, a certain amount of technology spending is necessarily tied to risk management and compliance because a failure to meet minimum eDiscovery and legal hold requirements can have disastrous consequences. While these twin priorities often compete for funding, it is now possible for an enterprise to adopt a single core technology to address both their data analytics and compliance requirements and double their bang for the buck in the process. (read more)

The factors that influenced which tape library to use in your environment used to be much simpler in nature when tape was used primarily as a backup target. But as disk has evolved to assume that role, tape libraries have evolved to provide new features so they may assume a much more strategic position within organizations to support their Big Data and Cloud initiatives. In this webcast, I take a look at how to choose the right tape library for your environment in light of these new forces that are impacting the use of tape libraries within organizations. (read more)

An integrated and centralized data store model that enables stakeholders from throughout an organization to harvest and analyze data on the same platform continues to be the goal of many organizations from the Global 2000 as they strive to address the requirements of Big Data. However, with today's decentralized and cloud based storage systems and data storage requirements for the Global 2000 reaching the petabyte and even exabyte levels, massive centralized single data store infrastructures with single points of failure such as Apache Hadoop may not the most effective long term solution. (read more)

Corporate data making its way to public clouds through the use of consumer-based or department selected tools, is a growing concern for many organizations. So is the cost of backup and storage of ever-increasing volumes of data. Cleversafe and Mezeo Software offer solutions to address these concerns, and the two companies recently partnered to provide information technology (IT) managers with an enterprise-class secure file-sync-and-share solution combined with a limitless-scale data storage solution. (read more)

The gap between fantasy and reality is still pretty wide in terms of what enterprises hope to achieve with Big Data analytics. Bridging this gap requires that organizations follow some best practices when implementing Big Data analytics tools and take into account some of the shortcomings of Hadoop. Using Symantec's forthcoming Veritas Cluster File System Connector for Hadoop, they may implement Hadoop and the Big Data analytics benefits it provides coupled with the stability and reliability that the Veritas Cluster File System provides. (read more)

Many organizations are discovering that their users, via a proliferation of wireless devices, and easy access to consumer-based storage clouds, are precariously storing corporate data on pubic clouds. Addressing this growing problem, Dell recently certified Mezeo Software, a provider of the storage services layer for cloud-scale applications, as a partner in the Dell DX Object Storage Technology Partner Program. (read more)

Earlier this year, DCIG interviewed the executive team at GroupLogic. GroupLogic shared with us how they approach the market for "enterprise file sharing" or what DCIG has been calling File-Sync-and-Share. In addition, we had the privilege of talking to Chris Broderick, CEO of GroupLogic who covered some of the company's history. (read more)

The accelerating increase in the amount of unstructured Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is leaving IT organizations struggling with how to store and manage all of this new information. Aside from needing to provide the underlying storage infrastructure to host this amount of data, companies are also faced with the task of properly managing their Big Data file stores to meet both existing and emerging governance, risk and compliance (GRC) obligations. To do so, there are five initial steps they can take now to get their organization in front of these demands. (read more)

To say with any degree of certainty what technologies will be hot in the next 6 - 12 months generally takes equal amounts of smarts and industry insight coupled with a little bit of luck sprinkled in to get it right. So as I compare what I forecast earlier this year to what I see taking place now, I was certainly right on some points but premature in predicting others. So today with the midpoint of 2012 upon us, I thought I would take a look at the five specific technology trends impacting organizations right now. (read more)

Everyone talks about how Big Data is changing how data and storage is managed but what many forget is that Big Data also comes with "Big Costs" in terms of the hardware needed to store it and the software and people needed to manage it. Imation saw these three costs coming down the pike and now provides SMBs and SMEs a very affordable and practical solution to address all of these concerns (read more)

Organizations choosing file-sync-and-share solutions are presented with many options. Buyers and sellers are inquiring with DCIG about "Enterprise Dropbox" options. A popular request is what to look for when selecting a solution. Enterprises and consumers require enhanced features beyond the ease of use and standard consumer capabilities; they require something that these public cloud solutions cannot deliver - security and control. (read more)

In the technology industry start-ups seem to come out of the wood work on an almost daily basis. But what is rare is when an established veteran in the technology industry such as Imation decides to cultivate and incubate a start-up within the company to meet pent-up customer demands for technologies that can handle their growing 'bigger data', cloud computing and regulatory requirements. In the first part of this interview series with Imation's Global Marketing Director Bill Schilling, we discuss Imation's evolution over the past 12 - 18 months and how it has positioned itself to be the "Bigger Data" storage provider for small and midsized businesses and enterprise (read more)

DCIG is very excited to announce the availability of its inaugural DCIG 2012 Big Data Tape Library Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 140 features on more than 60 tape libraries from 8 different storage providers. Driven by the explosion of storage requirements to address "Big Data" and the "Cloud," organizations are now more than ever looking for cost-effective, viable storage media on which to store this data. This is why DCIG believes tape libraries are poised to be one of the big benefactors of these growing storage demands which prompted DCIG to produce its first ever Tape Library Buyer's Guide to help enterprises choose the right solution for their environment. (read more)

The deployment of flash memory storage as either storage or memory almost inevitably results in increases in application performance. However to get the real 'kick' in performance that today's transactional applications need and which flash can provide, a more elegant approach to flash's deployment is needed. Today I continue my discussion with Fusion-io Senior Director of Product Management, Brent Compton, who elaborates on the APIs that the Fusion ioMemory SDK exposes that make this boost in transactional performance possible. (read more)

Today many enterprises and cloud storage providers ask, "What scale-out storage solution will enable us to economically and easily house our burgeoning Big Data stores?" However small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) put a slightly different spin on that same question by asking, "What scale-out storage system will enable us to affordably address our 'bigger data' problems?" SMEs are finding an answer to their question in the form of the Gridstore Scale-out Storage platform. (read more)