How Storage Affects The Success Of Data Analytics

Modern data analytics can be a challenge when the underlying data platform can’t keep up – why modern storage technology, is more critical now than ever. Data has never been more critical to businesses than it is today. Data drives connected cities, influencing business decisions in real-time and making every customer interaction a personal and tailored experience. However, many companies still do not even know how to use their data sources.

There is often a lack of a strategy for collecting all available data, analyzing it, and making holistic decisions based on it. It often fails to integrate the previously separate data silos into one data environment. Therefore, an adequate data storage and delivery strategy are critical to getting the most value out of the data.

Changing Data Usage Places New Demands On The Infrastructure

The global volume of data is exploding. According to one forecast, it will grow to an unimaginable 175 zettabytes by 2025. IDC made this prediction despite the events of 2020 that have caused consumer data usage to skyrocket.

The way data is used has changed. Cloud applications, mobile devices, social media platforms, and IoT ( IoT ) sensors contribute to data growth. Each of the storage workloads required for this fulfills essential tasks. Applications that rely on file storage have become more sophisticated than database applications. The technical silos typically seen between these workloads have created challenges that can no longer be ignored. Businesses are stuck without a data platform that can keep up with today’s analytics tools.

The key to better data analysis is modernizing the IT infrastructure. Companies that make targeted investments here are well-positioned for modern analysis requirements. This is the only way to derive valuable insights from big data projects and use them strategically. The aim is to improve operational efficiency and the user experience and compliance, regulatory and security processes, develop new products and generate new revenue streams.

One Step Ahead Of The Competition

In a recent research project, Pure Storage partnered with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to examine the benefits for companies investing in analytics versus those not. The study showed that companies with mature data analysis capabilities are one step ahead of the competition. Compared to companies that don’t leverage data analysis skills, these companies were 3.2x more likely to perform better on customer satisfaction, 2.4x more likely to increase revenue per employee over the past two years, and 2.7 times more likely to have had a shorter time to market.

The critical component here is a high-performance flash-based cloud-ready solution that supports fast file and object storage. This provides the technological basis to support diverse, robust, and mature analysis programs with real-time or streaming analysis. This makes it possible to achieve positive and powerful results beyond increased sales potential.

Guide To The Implementation Of A Modern Data Strategy

Pure Storage recently published a guide to help organizations achieve their goals for modern data analytics. He takes an in-depth look at five areas where data storage solutions must offer advanced capabilities to enable organizations to evolve their analytics maturity. The most important findings are:

High-performance Storage is the path to faster insights. Companies that gain faster insights with real-time analytics can also act faster on potential business opportunities. A high throughput storage solution can support many users with massively concurrent connections and consistent performance at scale.

Agility helps keep up with changing data and applications. Workloads and operational requirements are constantly changing, in some cases hourly. Administrators are too busy with day-to-day routines, leaving them time to adapt storage systems to constant changes manually. Also, this process is anything but agile—and by no means the wise use of data architects’ precious time. A better approach is a cloud-optimized storage solution that supports variable data patterns and can scale with multiple workloads.

A cloud-optimized infrastructure is a must for running modern analytics applications. Organizations can enhance analytics capabilities with an on-premises storage foundation that offers the benefits of the cloud while operating on-premises. One of the critical features of a cloud-optimized storage solution is unified fast file and object Storage, available today as Unified Fast File and Object Storage, or UFFO for short. This enables analysis teams to achieve higher query performance and deliver insights faster.

Match data storage to usage model to keep costs down. Ideally, organizations only want to pay for the IT resources while scaling the storage platform up and down to meet ever-changing business needs. Subscription models for non-disruptive storage environment upgrades can help to stay up-to-date while keeping costs low.

Minimize the impact of outages and maximize uptime. The goal of data-driven companies is to be able to act on essential insights at lightning speed. As a result, they cannot afford planned or unplanned downtime for the storage solutions that support their advanced analytics applications.

It Depends On The Storage Solution

Data analytics offers excellent opportunities. With the right qualities in a data storage solution, organizations can empower more people—from developers to data scientists to generalists—with the modern tools they need to work with big data. The resulting insights are beneficial for making better and faster decisions.

Contemporary data platforms can help increase the maturity of data analytics and address the most demanding demands of modern data usage. The UFFO storage approach scores with cloud-like simplicity and agility while maintaining high performance and control over the data environment.

There are some challenges on the way to effective modern data use, but the technological barriers are rapidly falling. Today, when businesses are drowning in data overload, they can turn to storage solutions to meet the challenges. The possibilities are almost unlimited for modern, data-driven companies with more mature analytical skills and who are advancing confidently in this discipline.

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