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Top Four predictions for Big Data in the Cloud in 2012

Contributed Article by Russ Kennedy, VP Product Strategy, Marketing & Customer Solutions, Cleversafe

As big data continues to grow even bigger in 2012, we expect four key trends to impact cloud storage deployments:

1.       Exabyte-Scale Storage Is on the Horizon

It's not unrealistic to think that companies will be looking for storage solutions that can accommodate 10 exabytes of data in this decade. Defense and intelligence, public safety, energy and online media all rely on high-resolution satellite imagery, tools and expertise to support missions around the world. Today those needs reach one terabyte at minimum use capacity each day. In order to meet strict compliance guidelines for patient care and ensure the integrity of medical records, the health care industry makes an average of three copies of data for most patients, including medical imaging. That information needs to be readily available and securely retained.  The huge volumes of unstructured data now being generated both by and about individuals will lead more organizations in 2012 to think about what exabyte-scale storage will mean for the current infrastructures and future storage investments.

These organizations will confront the fact that traditional storage solutions are bound to fail when challenged to store the massive amounts of data being generated in today's enterprise environments. Reliability and integrity issues encountered at large scale (exabytes and beyond) require a new approach. 

2.       Big Data Security and Reliability Continue to be Primary Concerns in Cloud Storage Adoption

Concerns about the reliability, security, and accessibility of data in the cloud have slowed the adoption of cloud storage for big data.  The prospect of storing big data in the cloud raises some big questions in the minds of CIOs and storage administrators:

• I don't have visibility into the cloud, how is my data protected?
• Can others see my data if we are sharing the same hardware?
• With internet accessible storage, how is the system preventing malicious attacks?
• How do I know SLAs will be delivered and I won't experience downtime?
• Can I move my data easily?

These concerns won't go away in 2012, but the potential benefits of cloud storage will compel more organizations to look for solutions that address security and reliability of data in the cloud.  We expect more businesses to consider approaches such as dispersed storage that represent a paradigm shift from traditional storage and effectively address security and reliability challenges.

3.       The Cloud Gains Acceptance as a Viable Solution for Big Data Disaster Recovery

According to recent analyst surveys, disaster recovery has become one of the top use cases for Cloud storage.   Many businesses have begun using the Cloud as part of their disaster recovery strategy, and we expect that trend to continue into 2012.  Cloud storage offers the potential to safeguard big data and dramatically reduce restoration time, while minimizing the overall expense and management aspects of disaster recovery.

Cloud storage can be both advantageous and more cost-effective for disaster recovery than local storage. Two of the key advantages of cloud storage include recovery times and multi-site availability, ensuring that a business's data is not lost, compromised or unavailable.  Cloud storage can provide these advantages because of its inherent scalability, elasticity and rapid deployment.  Furthermore, cloud storage supports the ability to dynamically fine tune the cost and performance of the disaster recovery plan according to business criticality of the application.  To deliver on all the requirements of disaster recovery in a cost-effective manner, businesses will begin to look more closely at cloud-based solutions.

4.       RAID is Officially Dead

Current data storage systems based on RAID arrays were not designed to scale to the level of data growth mentioned above.  As a result, the cost of RAID-based storage systems increases as the total amount of data storage increases, and data protection degrades resulting in permanent digital asset loss.  With the capacity of storage devices today, RAID-based systems cannot protect data from loss.  Most IT organizations using RAID for big data storage incur additional costs to copy their data two or three times to protect it from inevitable data loss.  In 2012, forward-thinking IT executives will begin making a strategic shift to information dispersal to realize greater data protection as well as substantial cost savings for digital content storage.

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About the Author

Russ Kennedy brings more than 20 years of experience in the storage industry to Cleversafe as the company's Vice President of Product Strategy, Marketing & Customer Solutions. Having rolled up his sleeves working on automated tape libraries, Russ is still attracted to the technological challenges that have shaped the industry and particularly to the innovative approach that Cleversafe delivers to storage.

Previously, Russ served as the Vice President of Competitive Intelligence at CA Technologies, and was the Senior Director of Engineering and Product Management at Thin Identity Corporation.