The buzz word in the IT industry used to be virtualization. Virtualization changed the landscape of IT and server consolidations became very popular. Next, cloud computing became the hottest buzz word followed by our favorite term, Big Data.

What exactly is Big Data and how can you benefit from it? Big Data by definition is simply information that cannot be processed or analyzed with traditional processes or tools. Basically, you have a vast amount of data but you really do not know how valuable it is because you have no mechanism to find out. Can you see the problem?

According to an IBM survey, a large percentage of our leaders today do not have insight into their business model or data to effectively perform their duties. With the amount of space we have today, we are storing more and more information at an alarming rate. The key to success is to have the ability to get to this data or what we would call your gold mine. If you have gold behind a 50 foot wall but no dynamite or a drill, how are you going to get to it. It is worthless just like terabytes of data and no way to get insight into that valuable information.

In 2000, 800,000 petabytes of data was stored in the world; that is massive. How much of that data do you think is being analyzed? By 2020 we are looking at 35 zettabytes. Just to help you understand more, Twitter generates 7 terabytes of data every day and Facebook generates 10 terabytes.

In order to handle the onslaught of Big Data, you need a Data Center and platform that can handle your growth. This is an area in which we specialize. We can support your storage needs in a very highly available solution. Once you have a platform and infrastructure that can handle your Big Data, you need a good BI reporting suite to help you discover your data. Tools such as Hadoop and Cognos can help you navigate the waters.

Don’t be surprised by how quickly your storage can grow. Contact us today to see how we can help you grow as your data grows.