BANGALORE, INDIA: As per IDC, unstructured data in traditional data centers will eclipse the growth of transaction-based data that until recently has been a lion's share of enterprise data processing.

Phil Gann, director, Storage Infrastructure and Business Continuity, APAC, Hitachi Data Systems, says: “Type of data that organization has to store has changed. We are seeing a huge growth in the amount of capacity that need to be stored. Companies are looking for smart ways to hold and manage that data, especially that of the unstructured ones, such as excel spreadsheets, power point presentations etc.”

Storage-as-a-Service: A precursor to cloud computing

It is a reason to be concerned more than ever because the total amount of digital information will balloon to 1,800 exabytes by 2011.

“If we continue to store data in the traditional way as we have been doing all these years, by 2011 there won't be enough power in the world. So in order to do things with the available power supply we need smarter technologies, such as SSDs, flash drives, Gann adds.

The market research firm further finds that while transactional data is still projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21.8 per cent, it’s far outpaced by a 61.7 per cent CAGR predicted for unstructured data in data centres. Moreover, data requirements are growing at an annual rate of 60 per cent.

“So you can imagine that with 60 per cent of growth each year in a large organization is significant amount of data that organizations have to manage, protect and store,” Gann notes.

Partly cloudy days ahead for cloud storage

Individuals, including myself, depend a lot on storage devices today in order to store the whole lot of information that has been collected in the real-time, such as mails, photos, files, etc. Some rely on hard drives that are pretty expensive. Whereas, some others prefer to store it in external storage devices, such as USBs and compact discs (CDs). However, what if you lose it? Along goes your precious data too!

Now, this is just a small scenario, what if an enterprise (irrespective of its size), for which data is an integral part of its existence, faces the same situation.

Manish Gupta, associate director, IBM Research India, says, “At a time when organizations of all sizes are facing extreme data overload, skyrocketing energy costs, increasingly complex regulatory requirements and competition from more nimble economies, cloud computing is emerging as a significant shift across all industries.”

So the million dollar question arises, if so, then where to store it? Here enters the cloud storage.

Cloud Storage: Advantages
This computing model allows businesses and consumers alike to remotely access a vast computing resource that can be tapped on-demand to deliver next-generation services that consumers demand, like online medical records or mobile stock portfolio management.”

“It also improves energy efficiency because of its principle as a shared infrastructure, and allows organizations to better track information, pay for what they use and access more computing, storage, services or applications on demand,” IBM adds.

Corporates have moved away from the on-site working model to off-site. The latter has become the norm of the day. No more do people want to be restricted to a desktop or a cubicle workspace with hard drives and external storage devices.

They would like to be on the move and also have an access to corporate data while on the move. Cloud storage has several advantages over traditional data storage. For example, if you store your data on a cloud storage system, you'll be able to access that data from any location that has Internet access.

You wouldn't need to carry around a physical storage device or use the same computer to save and retrieve your information. With the right storage system, you could even allow other people to access the data, turning a personal project into a collaborative effort.

However, what about the security of these data that are being accessed all over the world and what about the data that are being hosted on some other's cloud, off the premise.

So what are the challenges on the cloud. Read it in the next article.

Cloud Storage: No more a security nightmare