Building a future-proof data center is increasingly difficult, not least because of the sheer volume of information your business is acquiring. For some, the cloud seems to provide a solution – at least in terms of elasticity.
Before moving towards hosted systems however, there are some fundamental factors that need to be addressed – otherwise you may find the public cloud fails to deliver on expectations. Known as the “3 A’s”, your strategy must account for each of the following:
1. Analytics
Digital transformation programs rely on using your data intelligently. There’s nothing new with about using historical data to plan future operations – your CFO has been doing it for years to provide cashflow forecasts for instance – but big data takes analytics to the next level.
Your data center strategy needs to consider how to make this data available most effectively.
2. Algorithms
The volumes of data held by your business means that the days of manual analytics are coming to an end. In future your business units will be completely reliant on intelligent algorithms to sort through enormous amounts of information more quickly.
Well-designed algorithms also help to eradicate human-error, preventing insights being overlooked. But real time analytics and algorithms rely on having speedy access to your information stores – which means that the latency inherent in off-site storage may be a problem.
3. Archives
Whether they actually need to keep every scrap of data or not, many organizations choose not to destroy anything (unless legally required of course). But given that analytics work best with as much contextual data as possible, CTOs are under pressure to keep everything.
The limitless nature of cloud storage is compelling – particularly as the capital outlay is thought to be significantly lower than building on-site archiving provisions. But if elastic capacity comes at the cost of increased latency, it could be that your archiving strategy is fundamentally flawed.
AAA – how does your strategy measure up?
Analytics, algorithms and archives will define your organization’s ability to achieve true digital transformation – but have you properly factored them into your data center strategy?
To discuss your options moving forward – including how to best leverage existing storage assets to combat real-time data storage latency – please get in touch.
– See more at: https://www.cds.net/blog/2017/04/data-center-strategy-analytics-algorithms-archive/#sthash.9Dk9rZ78.dpuf