Five Impactful Trends In The Age Of Data

CTO At Dell Technologies

Data is the cornerstone of business competitiveness. Faced with the evolution of their nature, consumption, and business expectations, it is crucial to benefit from a level of maturity in correlation with the needs of the company and appropriate technologies for relevant results and competitive advantage. Significant. As companies operate or begin their transformation, we observe five impactful trends that are changing the game in the age of data.

The Exponential Growth Of Data

Global data creation has been skyrocketing for more than a decade due to the proliferation of intelligent devices and IoT sensors. According to a study by IDC, new data volumes will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% between 2021 and 2025 – which will translate into the creation of approximately 175 zettabytes (Zb) by 2025.

For example, a zettabyte is so large that it would take about a million supercomputers (or a billion powerful home computers) to store it. Added to this is the unprecedented rise of various types of data (including unstructured and streaming data, such as free files, PDFs, photos, audio, and video clips) and the challenges organizations face in extracting their value. The same IDC report indicates that by 2025, 80% of global data will be unstructured.

Under these conditions, finding a solution to manage this unstructured data is a significant challenge. Next-gen applications can offer processing solutions, but they typically require the extreme performance of all-flash storage. And many times, companies are unable to acquire such robust systems due to budget constraints. In the future, efficient scale-out file storage solutions that are easy to scale and use regardless of the amount of unstructured data to be managed will be of great help.

The Era Of Large-Scale Intelligence

Edge Computing, 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Quantum Computing are transforming how data is collected, processed, and used. So, for the first time in history, we are facing the explosion of data with intelligent infrastructure, software, and algorithms that deliver actionable insights quickly.

They can create added value and improve the user experience at the edge. There is also a symbiotic relationship between the advanced and connected technologies deployed and the mass of new data to be explored. Similarly, there is a symbiosis between the success of Edge technologies and data management.

By empowering organizations to act on data close to its source, Edge technology can improve efficiency and help create new experiences. Coupled with AI, Edge Computing will be able to change how machines share and process this data – an opportunity that will allow companies to create more value.

Decentralized Data

A more excellent distribution of data sources accompanies the adoption of emerging technologies. As the center of gravity rapidly shifts to the periphery, data is increasingly stored, processed, and acted upon closer to its source. At the same time, an increasing number of functions operate at the periphery.

Thus, it is necessary to manage data in a differentiated and coherent way – from the enterprise’s core to the edge through hybrid clouds. Hence the need to modify computing, network, storage, and application architectures to respond to these new decentralized uses.

Growing Consumer Expectations

Today’s consumers are more independent than ever and value personalized, real-time, data-enhanced experiences. Whereas in the past several days, we needed to extract new information, now real-time is becoming more democratic. Thus, the increasing reliance on AI and machine learning to make instantaneous decisions in a distributed environment can put the most advanced data management strategies to the test.

In practice, most companies need IT capabilities to keep up with this pace, as their management is tailored to deliver insights and results in hours or days. To quickly transform data into relevant information, organizations must study their expectations and processing capacities. Applications that previously required human intelligence, including data analytics, complex processing, statistical modeling, and visualization, are now enhanced with powerful machine learning algorithms.

Data Breaches And The Regulatory Environment

Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated, and data breaches are skyrocketing. Over the past 12 months, the estimated total cost of data loss has exceeded $1 million on average per organization ( Dell study ). Consequently, the regulatory environment is evolving, incorporating more stringent security, privacy, and governance standards.

As data is collected, stored, and processed in multiple locations, the attack surface increases, and compliance with international laws and regulations becomes more complex. In addition, customers want to deal with trusted organizations that are secure, legal, and agile. The protection of the internal computer network and a zero-trust authentication policy make it possible to reinforce the security of the company’s data.

Solutions such as data vaults and real safes offer several layers of protection against threats. Setting up an isolated data center environment disconnected from corporate and backup networks with restricted access (only for users with the appropriate permissions) is also a bulwark to ensure a cyber recovery strategy at any test. Thus, these trends indicate priorities for enabling organizations to remain competitive.

Digital Is No Longer the Only Differentiating Factor

According to a Digital Transformation Index, 91% of businesses agree that extracting relevant insights from data is more critical than ever. The challenge for companies is to exploit the potential value of data through storage solutions and servers. With the rise of next-generation applications, driven by trends such as Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT), enterprises are turning to software-defined storage solutions to gain agility, resilience, scalability, and profitability.

Faced with the wave of data, it is essential to gain agility by accelerating its circulation in a multi-cloud environment to transform the relevant information into efficient actions and deliver value. We currently have zettabytes of data, computing infrastructure, software, and intelligent algorithms to quickly turn these resources into development opportunities.