+
EDITOR’S QUESTION
DANIEL JACOBS, SENIOR
PRODUCT MANAGER –
CLOUD COMPUTING AT VOX
///////////////////
C
ompanies are traditionally used to planning three or five years
in advance for storage growth. Big data has changed the way
companies plan their future storage demand and often they
don’t realise that their data is growing exponentially and with it their
storage. Considering cloud solutions and given that they may be using
a pay-per-use model, they need to be vigilant about their storage
requirements and how they utilise their environment, otherwise the
cost can become unviable.
Organisations further need to have a handle on what data they have,
where it is and whether they need the ability to access it immediately
or not. The next step is to understand where
their storage lives, the kind of storage they
need to have or add and the associated
costs. These are all considerations to take
into account when planning the storage
requirements of a business.
Data can include terabytes of non-business
related data, for example pictures sent by
staff of their kids’ birthday parties, which the
business doesn’t need, but financial records
of the last five years are key for it to keep to
remain compliant.
Another consideration is that there are
various levels of storage and that they range
in price with the most expensive being all-
flash storage and the least costly archive
storage that has relatively slow access.
The latter is reserved for non-critical data
that a business keeps for compliance. It’s
important for a business to be able to tier
across the different storage platforms
so that data can move down into a less
www.intelligentcio.com
“
ORGANISATIONS
FURTHER NEED TO
HAVE A HANDLE
ON WHAT DATA
THEY HAVE,
WHERE IT IS AND
WHETHER THEY
NEED THE ABILITY
TO ACCESS IT
IMMEDIATELY
OR NOT.
costly tier as it gets older. This can save the
business quite a bit of money if it does it
properly. With data becoming the new oil,
organisations must be able to gather insights
and make informed business decisions for
competitive advantage. It is no use having
data in silos and there are several business
intelligence tools that can be used to move
data around so that the business can benefit
from analysing it.
With Microsoft Azure now available in South
Africa, local businesses can take advantage of
features such as moving their backup storage
into archive. Features such as these save the
business money and it is a welcome thought,
especially given our mercurial economy. The
multi-national data centres arriving provides
organisations with more choice, flexibility
and best practice. They can now consider
a multi-cloud strategy for their workloads
and applications and optimise their
storage environments. n
INTELLIGENTCIO
27