Intelligence limited only by your architectural imagination

By Richard Arneson, GDT

Imagine a world where you come home and toss your car keys, jacket, clothes, wallet, et al., into a bin that would smartly send each to where it belongs—closet, key hook, shoved under the bed, etc. The next morning, when you’re getting ready for the new day, everything is exactly where it should be. No more fishing around for items vying to make you ashamedly late for your 8 AM meeting. Sound too good to be true? Well, it is, at least at home. But in the IT world, not so much.

The IDC estimates that within the next six (6) years—by 2025—the amount of data will reach a hundred sixty-three (163) zettabytes. That’s about two thousand percent (2,000%) more than today’s tally. Organizations that know how to use their proliferation of data will be able to better develop new sources of revenue and service customers, and become more competitive. That’s where Intelligent storage steps in.

It’s more than intelligent; it’s a game changer

As its name suggest, intelligent storage is just that. Through Al and machine learning, intelligent storage learns—intelligently, of course—behaviors and adapts to its environment. The result is easier, better management of the mountains of data your organization produces daily. Intelligent storage helps you extract actionable insights, understand where data can be best positioned and provides recommended actions, or automatically makes them, while allowing your IT organization to focus on other projects or initiatives. It can be deployed as hardware on-prem, as a virtual appliance or as a cloud service.

The less-than-intelligent traditional storage system

Traditional storage systems place no priority on certain types of data, which means when it’s needed the time-consuming, cumbersome search begins. And depending on the data (see sensitive), it can be nerve rattling, as well. Intelligent storage removes these headaches; it understands workloads and what they need, adapts to changes and makes it easy to support and manage.

When data was stored primarily in , it did its job pretty well. But data has moved far outside the data center perimeter. Now it exists everywhere—in private and public clouds, and at the network edge in mobile devices, sensors, even vehicles. And that data needs to be moved to where it can be processed and easily accessible to the end users who need it, and need it now. Tackling today’s data demands with traditional storage is like taking a broken abacus into a CPA exam.

In the cloud, in the datacenter, at the edge—that’s Intelligent Storage

Two (2) years ago, The Economist made this now famous proclamation: “Data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change.” It’s difficult to argue the point, except for one (1) small thing—the oil supply is limited; we’re slowly running out. Data is the exact opposite. Not only will it continue to grow, but it’ll do so exponentially. So, isn’t it important to know how to best store, transfer, access, analyze and secure it?